


Employee of the Month

by ihatepeas



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst and Humor, F/M, Gen, Multi, Relationship(s), Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-24
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-01-09 20:13:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 50,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1150296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ihatepeas/pseuds/ihatepeas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU in which Detective Lance gets a new partner--Felicity Smoak. Includes canonical moments and follows season1.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Big Girl

**Author's Note:**

> I used to just read fic, but I couldn't shake this idea, and no one else was writing it. I'm on deadline for my own novel, so if this story begins to interfere with that, updates will slow, but it's a nice change of pace from the novel, so I hope to keep up with it.

Detective Lance didn’t want a partner, and he especially didn’t want a girl partner. Felicity could hear him say so, striding into the squad room with the lieutenant in his wake. She kept her head down and continued distributing her belongings about her new desk.

“She’s younger than my daughter,” Lance growled, “and she came from Internal Affairs.”

“As tech support,” Lt. Pike clarified.

“And now you’re putting her in Major Crimes?”

“She’s proven herself,” said the lieutenant, “and I’m not going to stand in the way of anyone who wants to get _out_ of IA.”

“She’s younger than my daughter,” Lance said again.

“Top of her class at MIT.”

“Zero field experience.”

“Actually, I do have some field experience,” Felicity finally spoke up. “Mostly I sat in front of monitors and worked the kind of magic your mind couldn’t even comprehend, but I have been in the field before. So it’s not a lot of experience, but it’s not zero either . . .” Her voice trailed off as she realized she was rambling.

He was tall—like _really_ tall—and he was kind of looming over her now, taking in every detail as a detective should. His gaze traveled from her face to her clothes to the surface of the desk in front of her, where she’d just set her tablet, her TARDIS mug, and the framed photo of her with her parents at the Navy Pier in Chicago.

His expression was unreadable, and Felicity began to question her every decision. Should she have left the TARDIS mug at home? The cover on her tablet was sky blue with a drawing of an anime boy with silver hair and hearts for eyes. She’d had it for years, but the thought hadn’t occurred to her until just now that it might be unprofessional for her new position.

And her clothes . . . She’d been planning this outfit since the day she learned the transfer had been approved. After two unsuccessful shopping trips and a marathon session in front of her closet, she’d gone with black slacks, a blue button-down shirt with three-quarter sleeves, and the most sensible pair of shoes she owned, black Mary Janes with the lowest of heels. Her slacks were pristine and devoid of cat hair because she’d changed into them in her car. Her shirt was freshly ironed, and she knew every hair of her ponytail was in place because she’d checked in each reflective surface between the employee parking lot and the squad room. But maybe she’d dressed too casual. Or maybe not casual enough, judging by Detective Lance’s slightly disheveled attire.

“Detective Lance, meet Detective Smoak,” the lieutenant said.

Felicity held out her hand, but Lance ignored it. His gaze had returned to her clothes but not, she was relieved to note, to her chest. Frequent breast ogling was one of the many reasons she’d been desperate to get out of IA.

“Is that how you’re going to dress from now on?” he asked, meeting her eyes for the first time.

“Um, I guess? I mean, it’s a limited wardrobe, but I’m sure I can—”

He cut her off with a quick gesture. “You look like an intern. Maybe put your hair up and try some big-girl shoes tomorrow.” He turned back to Lt. Pike, who looked disappointed to be caught halfway to the door, making a break for it. “But no heels,” Lance called back before walking away.

Felicity sank into her chair and put her head in her hands. Big-girl shoes? She’d have to go on another shopping trip now, and she’d have to consult her mom on what kind of style “big-girl” translated to.

“I expected to see that posture eventually, but not this soon,” said a wry female voice.

Felicity looked up. The woman standing before her was tall, toned, and gorgeous. Laurel Lance. Felicity recognized her from all the internet research she’d done on her new partner. Some of it not, strictly speaking, legal.

“I’m Laurel, Detective Lance’s daughter.” She extended her hand and Felicity stood up to shake it. At least someone was glad to see her.

“Oh, uh, he’s not here,” Felicity stammered. “He just left with—”

“Don’t tell me,” said Laurel, closing her eyes briefly. “He stomped off in a pout, didn’t he?”

“Well . . .” Felicity didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t sound judgmental or rude.

Laurel smiled, tucking a honey strand of hair behind her ear. “You don’t have to be diplomatic with me, Detective.”

“Smoak. Felicity Smoak.”

“Good to meet you, Detective Smoak,” said Laurel, shaking her hand again. “I’m glad you’re here. My dad’s been working on his own too long. It’s not good for him.” Her green eyes clouded with unspoken emotions. “We’ll probably be seeing more of each other, but I wanted to make sure my dad was behaving himself on your first day.”

“‘Behaving himself’?” To Felicity, that only meant one thing. The heat of a blush began to creep up her neck.

“Oh, God no, not like that. I don’t think he’s even looked at another woman since my mom left,” Laurel assured her. “He’s not like that anyway, and you look too much like my sister.”

Felicity hadn’t noticed any resemblance at all when she was looking at pictures of Lance family members that had been all over the papers following the yacht accident that had killed billionaire CEO Robert Queen, his son Oliver, and Oliver’s date for that weekend, Sara Lance. "I do?"

“Kind of,” said Laurel. “She’s—she _was_ —young and blonde. And shorter than me,” she added. “My point is, you have nothing to worry about on that score.”

“Okay, good,” Felicity said slowly. She didn’t know how else to respond. At least she hadn’t gone off on a babbling tangent about Detective Lance keeping his hands to himself or something.

“Checking up on me, Laurel?”

The young woman turned as Detective Lance approached. “Hey, Dad,” she said. “Just introducing myself to your new partner.”

“Just warning my new partner,” he grumbled.

“Now, Daddy,” said Laurel, batting her eyelashes, “why on earth would I want to do that? Could it be because I know you too well?”

“Shouldn’t you be getting back to work?” he asked, taking her elbow. “Let me walk you out.”

Laurel turned and winked at Felicity before letting Detective Lance lead her from the squad room.


	2. Call Waiting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our heroine puts her foot in her mouth . . . and not for the last time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In answer to a couple of questions, yes, there will be Olicity. Of course there will be Olicity! But y'all have to be patient because I really dig the slow burn and I want this to parallel canon as much as possible. The other question was about the timeline. These first two chapters take place, as will be obvious when you read further, on the day Oliver's return from the dead hits the news.

“We’ve caught a case.”

Felicity swept her TARDIS mug off the desk and into her purse before standing to meet Detective Lance’s dark eyes. She’d been staring at the mug since he’d walked his daughter out, trying to decide if she should leave it out or put it in a drawer.

“What kind of case?” she asked.

“Home invasion,” Lance said. “I’m driving.”

Felicity snatched up her purse and bounced after him. He crossed the room in just a few long strides, and she could see herself doing a lot of running to catch up in the future of this partnership. She made a mental note to stop avoiding cardio in her workout.

She followed Detective Lance through police headquarters to the back of the building. He greeted several officers by name but never introduced her. He didn’t even check to see if she was keeping up. He signed out an unmarked vehicle, having an entire silent conversation with the sergeant on duty as he took the keys.

Squinting in the bright sun as they entered the motor pool parking lot, Felicity lugged her purse along. The handle of the mug secreted within was digging into her hip. She wished she’d just left it on her desk instead of freaking out, but it was far too late to do anything about it. The car Detective Lance went to was a hulking black SUV. As the locks clicked free, she breathed a silent prayer of thanks that she hadn’t worn a skirt.

Despite her sensible attire, getting into the SUV was problematic. Felicity wasn’t tiny, but the vehicle dwarfed her and the running board was level with her knees. She had to brace her arms on the seat for leverage to climb up. Detective Lance, already settled behind the wheel, quirked an eyebrow but said nothing. With an aggravated sigh, she swung her purse onto the floor at her feet. The mug inside it clanked softly against her gun, even though the weapon was protected by a padded compartment.

“Detective Lance, Detective, or sir,” he said as he put the SUV in gear. He pulled out of the parking space without a single glance at the view from the back-up camera. “We’re not on a first-name basis, and you’re my junior partner.”

“Are you going to call me ‘ma’am’?” she asked, pushing up her glasses.

“Detective, or Detective Smoak.”

“Good, because ‘ma’am’ makes me feel like a spinster. One with a lot of cats. I only have one cat.”

“A spinster?” he scoffed. “You’re twenty-five.”

She slid her eyes sideways to glance at him. She wasn’t the only one who’d done some research.

“This scene we’re heading to, it’s in the Glades,” he said gruffly.

“Okay.”

The detective spared her a brief look before returning his gaze to the road. “You’re not going to gasp, or even turn a little pale? Because I’m not walking in there with you hiding behind me, clutching my jacket.”

Felicity shrugged. “My apartment is in the Glades. Well, it’s more on the outskirts, but I think that counts. And I carry a gun.”

She said it breezily like she was fearless, but just last night she’d gotten home well after dark. She speed-walked from her crappy parking spot beneath a broken streetlight to the front of her building with her gun in her right hand, covered by her long sleeve, and a high-powered Taser in her left.

“Why live there?” asked Lance. “You could afford better.”

“I can’t, actually,” Felicity said. “I’m a tech nerd. I have a lot of equipment, and I’m always doing system upgrades. It’s not cheap, so the lower rent helps.”

He grunted. “Ever heard of Crispin Bayne?” he asked after a moment.

“Heard of him? Are you kidding me?” she gushed. “He’s like the king of the nerds! He’s a programming Jedi Master . . . Um, a Jedi Master is—”

“I know what it means,” Lance said. “I’m not that out of touch.”

“Of course you’re not,” Felicity agreed, quickly backtracking. “I didn’t mean to imply—I mean, that is . . . Oh God, stop it,” she said to herself. “Three, two, one.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “Why are we talking about Crispin Bayne?”

“Well, apparently his home was just invaded.”

“Here? Crispin Bayne lives here, in Starling City?”

“You know all about him, but you don’t know that?” Detective Lance asked.

“No one knows,” she replied. “He has this whole J.D. Salinger persona. Reclusive and mysterious.”

“Reclusive, huh?” Lance grumbled. “This’ll be fun, then.”

Felicity didn’t know what to say to that, but she was desperately trying to think of something. Before she could, Lance reached over and jacked up the volume on the police radio.

“—alive,” an officer was saying. “It’s all over the news.”

Someone responded in static. A dispatcher told the officer to cut the chatter, but he wasn’t finished. “Guess someone will have to tell Detective Lance.”

Lance slapped at the volume knob, but Felicity could just barely make out the dispatcher saying, “Poor bastard.”

“What was that about?” she asked. “Who’s alive?”

His phone rang then. She recognized the ringtone as the theme from _COPS_. Felicity didn’t say anything, but her eyebrows rose nearly to her hairline.

The detective snorted. “Yeah, it’s a little on-the-nose. My daughter Sara put that on there after the last time I grounded her. To get back at me, I guess.” He drew the phone from his jacket pocket and set it in one of the cup holders.

“Are you going to answer it?”

“I’m driving,” he said. “I don’t even look at it when I’m driving.”

While the phone continued to ring, she did the math in her head. Sara Lance was twenty when the _Queen’s Gambit_ disappeared in a storm off the coast of China. She probably wasn’t grounded after she started college. That meant Detective Lance had left his ringtone unchanged for at least seven years. And the phone was newer than that—she recognized the model. He had to have transferred over the ringtone along with his contact list and other important information. It was sad and sweet, the kind of thing Felicity’s own father might have done. Except Felicity wouldn’t have gone onboard a yacht with her sister’s über-rich boyfriend. She didn’t have a boyfriend at all, certainly not an über-rich one, and she didn’t have a sister anyway . . . 

“Stop. Now,” Lance said through clenched teeth.

Felicity’s hand went to her lips. “Did I just say some of that out loud?”

“Yes.” His hands gripped the wheel even tighter, like he was making a concerted effort to squeeze it instead of her throat. She was not unfamiliar with that kind of reaction in response to one of her rambles.

“Which part?” she asked.

“Does it matter?”

Felicity shrugged. Lance’s phone rang again—he continued to ignore it, so she did too.

“I do that sometimes,” she began to explain. “I get so wrapped up in my thoughts that I don’t realize they’re not thoughts anymore—they’re words. And they just come out. I don’t get the chance to neaten them up.”

“You’re honest,” he said. “I’ll give you that.” But his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel didn’t ease up.

The phone trilled out a short series of beeps.

“Voice mail alert?” Felicity asked.

Lance said nothing, but there was another beep. And another. Text message alerts.

“Wow, someone really wants to talk to you.” She reached for the phone.

“Leave it,” he growled.

Felicity snatched her hand back. She waited in silence for as long as she could, which wasn’t very long, and then spoke up.

“Can I turn on the radio? The regular radio?” she asked. “If there’s something to occupy my mind, I don’t ramble as much.”

“Fine,” he replied. “But keep it turned down low. And no teenybopper crap. I heard enough of that raising two girls.”

Felicity opened her mouth to say something indignant about her music preferences, but the truth was, she had a fair amount of teenybopper crap on her iPod. And the whole point was to stop rambling. She tuned the radio to a local news broadcast and twisted the volume knob ever so slightly until she could hear it.

“—breaking news that we brought to you about twenty minutes ago. The Queen family has just released a statement, which reads in part, ‘While we are overjoyed at the miracle that is bringing Oliver back to us, we ask for the media and the public to respect our privacy and the privacy of the families who were not so fortunate as to the return of their loved ones.”

Detective Lance snapped the volume knob right off the panel. Felicity casually reached into her purse, hand closing over her own phone. Her need to know was stronger than mere curiosity. She was pretty much an information addict, and in this case it seemed to vital to her new partnership that she learn as much as she could about what they’d just heard.

She quickly became lost in the internet browser on her phone, paging through article after article. They all basically said the same thing, though tones varied from dry to hysterical. A Chinese fishing boat had picked up a bearded, bedraggled man who had later walked into the U.S. Embassy in Shanghai, claiming to be Oliver Queen. He was currently on his way back to Starling City.

There weren’t many details, and no answers to the questions zooming through her mind. How was his identity confirmed? Why was he returning now? Where had he been for the last five years? What had happened to the others on the yacht?

No pictures, either. No new ones. All the photos were from before the accident and showed Oliver Queen blond, cocky, and grinning. Felicity had no idea what the attraction was supposed to be. When she looked at his pictures, she just felt like slapping him.

“That grin makes you want to slap him, doesn’t it?”

Felicity jumped at the sound of Lance’s voice. She thumbed off her phone and looked around. They were in an underground parking structure with the engine off. How long had he been waiting for her to finish?

“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” she confessed.

“Good. Now if you can just rein in your mouth a little bit, we might get along.” He clicked the locks free and got out easily.

Felicity dropped her phone into her purse and opened her door. To her surprise, there was Detective Lance, holding out his hand. She took the help rather than fall face-first onto the concrete so very far below.

He dropped her hand as soon as her feet hit the ground and walked away from her, heading toward the elevator.

Felicity slammed her door and ran to catch up. “Are you okay with this Oliver Queen business . . . sir?” she remembered to add.

Lance pinned her to the spot with a look that could have frozen lava.

“Okay, I’m just not going to ever ask you that again,” she said quietly.


	3. In the Dog House

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Felicity does not act professionally. :P

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks go to my beta, Mestizaa, for commas, motivations, and general encouragement. And if you're DYING for that first meeting, it will happen in the next chapter. It goes without saying that I don't own Arrow or these characters--just having fun playing with them.

When they were back in the SUV, Felicity had wanted to explain that she'd just been flustered by meeting one of her idols (who'd turned out to be kind of a jerk, but still). She wanted to say that she was usually very professional, that it was her dumb luck that their first case together involved Crispin Bayne. But for once, she couldn't find the words. Lance stayed silent too, and it was a long drive back to the station. Her face flamed and her heart hammered as she replayed the terrible moment in her head.

Detective Lance never said anything to her directly, but the punishment began immediately and lasted for days. First, he had her do all the paperwork for the Crispin Bayne home invasion. It was an easy case. Bayne knew exactly who had broken in and what they were after—he even gave them the surveillance footage to prove it. Lance had her fill out the warrants and then told her to sit by the phone while he made the arrest alone. The paperwork took hours because it was all new to her and because she wanted to get it perfect.

He wasn't finished driving home his point yet. Over the next two days, Lance assigned her every mundane task he could think of, from schlepping files all over the building to cleaning out the microwave after someone's chili exploded, to acting as IT support for the entire unit. She'd thought her days of "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" were over.

When they came up in the rotation for the next case, Detective Lance insisted that she stay in the squad room and continue investigating Lt. Pike's laptop, which was running at a snail's pace.Felicity made a fool out of herself at Crispin Bayne's. Somehow Detective Lance was able to take the startling news that Oliver Queen was alive and shove that down deep in some part of him that he didn't need for this investigation. He acted totally professionally, and Felicity . . . did not.

She did a fair amount of fangirling over Crispin Bayne himself. He was king of the nerds, after all. And the notoriously media-shy programmer turned out to be hot, in a pale, vampiric sort of way. But when Felicity turned quickly to distract herself from imagining him sinking his teeth into her neck, she spilled the coffee he'd offered her. It went everywhere, splashing across his tablet, which made her gasp in horror as it was top-of-the-line, and soaking into the pristine white carpet.

Bayne didn't shout or order her and Detective Lance to leave. What he did was much, much worse. He stared at Felicity for a long time, as if memorizing her face. Her cheeks burned as she used tissues from her purse to dab at the brown spots on the carpet. Then Bayne informed Detective Lance that he'd be sending a bill to the Starling City Police Department. He completely ignored Felicity for the remainder of their time in his apartment. He would take Detective Hilton with him instead, whose own partner was out sick. Hilton and Lance would look into the kidnapping and assault of Oliver Queen and Tommy Merlyn. Hilton and Lance would be invited into the Queen mansion, where no one would squeak and spill the coffee. And Felicity would just sit at her desk, emptying the browser cache and defragging the lieutenant's hard drive.

Lance was fuming when he and Hilton returned from the Queen residence. He slammed drawers and then stormed into the break room. Felicity was surprised at the amount of noise he made just by pouring a cup of coffee.

"What's that about?" she asked Detective Hilton as he was passing by her desk.

Hilton shrugged. "He held out for as long as he could, and then he lit into Oliver Queen. Got us thrown out."

Felicity frowned. "Will that hurt the case?"

"No. We know who attacked Queen and Merlyn. The bigger case is finding out who attacked the attackers."

She wanted to ask him more about that, but Lance came out of the break room then. He removed his notebook from the inner pocket of his jacket and tossed it on her desk. He nodded at Hilton. The other detective raised an eyebrow, but then he set down his own notebook next to Lance's. Felicity knew what that meant—make copies of the notes and start the paperwork. The punishment wasn't over yet.

The Queen/Merlyn kidnapping was fascinating. As she read the other detectives' notes, she seethed at her own awkwardness which had gotten her shut out of such a juicy case. Queen and Merlyn had been hit with tranquilizer darts and whisked out of an alley in the Glades, where they'd stopped to look at the factory Robert Queen had closed down years ago. While the kidnapping itself was interesting, the real story was what happened next.

While Tommy Merlyn remained unconscious, Oliver Queen claimed that a man wearing a green hood had attacked and killed the kidnappers. Two had died from gunshot wounds, what looked like friendly fire, and one had a broken neck. The coroner's preliminary results suggested that the man in the hood had done that with his bare hands.

Felicity could tell from Detective Lance's notes that he didn't much care why anyone would kidnap two spoiled young rich men. (That was easy—money.) He was more interested in the murder. What kind of guy could get the drop on three pros, and why would he kill them to protect Oliver Queen of all people?

Queen's description was vague, just a man in a hood, and he was probably still drugged at the time. Lance was completely focused on this mysterious, skilled murderer, but there was no evidence other than the eyewitness account. Felicity had to take work home that night. Her arms were full of files—she'd pulled old solved cases in order to use their forms as a template of sorts—and she was headed out the door when Detective Lance stopped her.

"We're up in the rotation again tomorrow," he said. "We've still got the hood guy case, but until there's a break, it's our turn for whatever comes up first."

She nodded. He'd barely spoken to her in two days. She'd forgotten how gravelly his voice sounded.

"And I've told the guys to quit bugging you, to just pick up the phone and call IT." He wasn't looking her in the eye anymore. "You're a detective, not a computer jockey. Right?"

"Right."

Message received. Her punishment was over. Or it would be as soon as she finished all the paperwork in her arms.


	4. Blonds and Bullet Holes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we find out Felicity has a cat . . . and a fateful meeting takes place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I know this is short, like all of my chapters, but I really wanted to get this one posted. Thanks for all the reads and reviews! I look forward to them, and I respond to every review. Some of them have even changed how I view this story and opened up some storytelling avenues that might not have occurred to me otherwise, so thank you! One last thing: if you squint really hard, there is a Smallville easter egg in this chapter. :D)

Felicity woke at 7:30 the next morning to the rustling sounds of Jpeg, her cat, walking across the sea of paper spread over the coffee table. After showering and getting dressed, she only had time to measure out some food for Jpeg and then shove all her work stuff into a giant tote bag.

Her wardrobe choices still reflected her punishment status, she realized as she drove to work. She’d paired a peach button-down with a striped pencil skirt and low heels because she’d fully expected to sit at her desk all day. She’d probably be stuck there for a while anyway, finishing the work she’d fallen asleep in the middle of the night before.

After only five days in Major Crimes, Felicity had already established a routine. She locked her purse in a desk drawer, shoved the file-laden tote under the desk, and headed for the break room, carrying her TARDIS mug. The coffee was strong enough to peel paint and so bitter it could make a snowman cry, but it was coffee and it was free.

Carrying a steaming mug with Splenda and plenty of creamer, Felicity made her way back to her desk. Detective Lance wasn’t in yet, she noticed as she pulled files from the tote bag. The papers were a jumbled mess. She’d have to sort it all out before she’d be able to tell how much work was left. 

By lunchtime, Lance still hadn’t shown up. Felicity finished her work and headed for the deli across the street. She was starving, and it seemed to take forever before she was setting her tray on the only empty table. She’d almost finished her French dip sandwich when a throat cleared in front of her.

“Felicity Smoak?”

She looked up. Oh God. It was—

“Hi. I’m Oliver Queen.”

“Of course!” she said in a high-pitched tone that startled both of them. “I know who you are. You’re Mr. Queen.”

“No, Mr. Queen was my father.”

“Right, but he’s dead. I mean he drowned. But you didn’t, which means you could come in here and listen to me babble. Which will end in three, two, one.” She took a deep breath and let it out.

This wasn’t the blond brat from the newspaper photos. For one thing, he wasn’t blond anymore. His hair was darker and shorter. Stubble peppered his chin and upper lip, a five o’clock shadow on a sharp jaw line. And that little smile on his face—where had that come from? Wait. Had _she_ put it there, with her tactless ramble? He didn’t call attention to it, either. He just smiled and continued the conversation. She definitely wasn’t used to that.

“I’m having some trouble with my computer,” he said, “and Detective Hilton told me that you were the person to come see.”

Felicity glanced around, looking for Hilton, but she was distracted from her efforts when Oliver Queen— _Oliver Queen!_ —set a laptop on the table in front of her lunch tray.

“I was at my coffee shop surfing the web,” he explained, “and I spilled a latté on it.”

She’d just taken a swig of Diet Coke, and she narrowly avoided spitting it everywhere. Any idiot could tell just by looking that a spilled latté wasn’t the problem.

“Really,” she said.

“Yeah.”

She risked eye contact. His face was open, his blue eyes wide, giving the impression of innocence. Something about him made her want to believe him, even though evidence to the contrary was right in front of her.

She poked at the laptop. “’Cause . . . these look like bullet holes.”

“My coffee shop is in a bad neighborhood,” he replied.

Felicity tilted her head and half-rolled her eyes. He smiled at her. _That smile._ It wasn’t blinding or anything, but it brought fire to her cheeks, and she felt her toes curl inside her shoes.

“If there is anything you can salvage from it,” he continued, “I would really appreciate it.”

She hummed in agreement. She couldn’t actually speak, which was just fine with her. One ramble was more than enough.

He smiled again and walked away. Felicity watched him go, her mouth hanging open. It took her brain a few moments to resume normal functions. When he disappeared from view, she said under her breath, “ _Wow._ In person, he is really . . . Wow.”

Detective Hilton approached her table, and she managed to toss a folder over the bullet-ridden laptop just in time.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Hilton said, nodding his head in the direction Queen had gone. “When he said he had a computer problem and your name came up . . .”

“It’s fine,” she said. “But just this once. I already have a job, and it isn’t tech support for tabloid stars.” Nice comeback. It was exactly what she wished she could have said to Oliver Queen himself.

Hilton grinned. “The look on your face as he walked away would suggest otherwise.” He tapped on the computer. “I’ll owe you for this. I want to stay on the kid’s good side in case he remembers anything more about the other night.”

“What about Detective Lance?” she asked.

“Quentin doesn’t think he _has_ a good side.”

“Everyone has a good side.” She tried to change the subject. “Any developments with the guy in the hood?”

There weren’t. Unless Detective Lance’s new obsession with the case counted as a development.

“That’s just the way he is. He latches onto things, can’t let them go,” Hilton said. “But most of those cases get solved because of it.”

Felicity could relate to that. The laptop full of bullet holes—it was a puzzle, a contest. She should pick up the laptop with the edges of her sleeves and turn it over to Detective Lance, but she knew she wouldn’t. Curiosity was rising up from within her, and she wouldn’t be able to rest until she learned what was on that computer and why it was in Oliver Queen’s possession.


	5. Doubt Truth to be a Liar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Felicity reveals a little more about herself . . . and puts her foot in her mouth again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully this slightly longer chapter will keep y'all going for a while. I need to re-watch some episodes before I write more, and I really need to work on my novel. Anyway, this will give you a bit more about Felicity's background, but it'll probably raise more questions than answers. And that's okay--gives me something to pay off later. :P So enjoy, and please review. Even if it's just to say you like it. (Forgot to say on FF, but the title comes from Hamlet.)

Felicity was getting tired of taking work home. But a shot-up computer delivered by Oliver Queen was a lot more interesting than filling out reports and typing up notes. She set the laptop on the kitchen counter where the light was better and got her computer toolkit out of a drawer. Jpeg rubbed up against her legs and purred as she removed screws from the back panel with her smallest screwdriver.

She’d been taking computers apart since she was seven. In no time, she had the panel off and the hard drive out. The casing had cracked, and there was a big dimple on the underside of the computer where a bullet had hit but not penetrated. Salvaging the data would be a piece of cake.

Felicity set up the damaged core to download onto an external hard drive. She badly wanted to peek at the information downloaded from the laptop, but her poker face was terrible. When she showed Oliver Queen what had been on that computer, it would have to be for the first time. While the data transferred, she watched Sherlock, and baked and frosted a batch of sour cream cookies. They were the best cookies in her repertoire, and she hoped they’d go a long way toward smoothing things over with Detective Lance. 

The next day, everyone was in the break room, crowded around the tray of cookies, when the back-from-the-dead billionaire strode into the squad room. Felicity saw him because she happened to be standing in the doorway, away from the feeding frenzy. It was easy for her to slip out unnoticed.

Oliver Queen looked pissed. He took her arm and steered her into the hallway.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were a cop?” he demanded.

Her mouth dropped open. “I—I thought you knew.”

“Do you really think I’d have brought you a laptop with bullet holes in it if I’d known you were a police officer?”

“Detective, actually,” she said, fingering the gold badge clipped at her waist.

His expression changed from anger to incredulity.

“Don’t look so shocked,” said Felicity. “It’s kind of insulting.”

He tilted his head, giving her a bemused smile. The speed with which his emotions seemed to change was giving her whiplash.

“Aren’t you kind of young to be a detective?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I went through the police academy after college. I spent maybe six months in uniform before they figured out I was good with computers. After two years in Cybercrimes, I moved to tech support for Internal Affairs.”

His eyebrow quirked up. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that a step down?”

“It was the only opening,” Felicity said, “and I really wanted out of Cybercrimes.”

“Then how did you go from Internal Affairs to here?”

He was leaning into her personal space now. It was kind of distracting. And annoying. She stepped around him and headed back toward the squad room, talking as she walked.

“I received the highest score they’ve ever had on the detective’s exam. On my first try.” She glanced over her shoulder to see that he was only two steps behind. “And I guess Detective Lance has burned a lot of bridges around here, so there aren’t many people willing to work with him. I was.”

He winced. “You work with Detective Lance? That’s just . . . great.”

She reached her desk and pulled out her chair. “So now you know what I’ve done for the last five years. What about you?”

A storm of emotions clouded his blue eyes. The weight of what she’d just said fell on her shoulders, and she dropped into her chair.

“Oh my God. I didn’t think—I mean, you don’t have to tell me—”

“Felicity.” He held up a hand to cut her off. It was a big hand, callused, not soft like she’d have expected of the idle rich.

“This isn’t the first time that’s happened since I’ve been back,” he said. “And it won’t be the last. Now, do you have anything for me?”

“Oh, the computer!” She opened a drawer and pulled out the laptop from between some empty folders.

He grasped her wrist and locked eyes with her. “Not here.”

“Oh, don’t worry. No one’ll see anything.” When he let go, she pushed the laptop across the desk, holding the folder on top of it in place. “They’re fighting over my cookies.”

One corner of his mouth curved upward. “Could you get anything from it, or is it a lost cause?”

“Mr. Queen, when it comes to computers, I don’t believe in lost causes.”

“Is that a yes?” he asked. “And call me Oliver, not Mr. Queen.”

Her nose scrunched up. “You said that before, didn’t you?”

“I did.” He snagged a chair from the desk across from hers and set it next to her. “Show me what you found.”

Felicity pulled the external hard drive from her bag and connected it to her tablet. It seemed wiser than using her work computer.

“The hard drive was only cracked,” she said. “Some of the data might be corrupted, but I doubt it.”

Lines of code began to scroll across the screen of her tablet. “Hmm.”

“What?” asked Oliver.

“Most of this is encrypted. I could probably crack it, but it would take a while.”

“Is there anything you can show me now?” he asked.

Felicity scrolled down the list of encrypted file names. “Here’s something.” She tapped on a file, and it opened. “Huh. Looks like blueprints.” She tilted the tablet toward him so he could see.

“Do you know what of?” he asked.

“The Exchange Building.” She pointed at the words in the lower right corner.

“Never heard of it.”

“It’s where the UNIDAC Industries auction is scheduled to take place.” She watched him stare blankly at the image. “I thought you said this was your laptop.”

“Yes,” he said. It did not sound at all convincing, and it was so obviously untrue.

“If this is about Queen Consolidated and Walter Steele . . .” She laid her tablet on the desk and turned toward him. “Look, I don’t want to get in the middle of some Shakespearean family drama thing.”

If she thought he was looking blank before, now he really was. He knew he was missing something, and his gaze shifted around the room like he thought he could actually find it there.

“Mr. Steele marrying your mom,” she prompted. “Claudius, Gertrude . . . Hamlet,” she said, indicating him.

“I didn’t study Shakespeare at any of the four schools that I dropped out of,” said Oliver.

“Mr. Steele’s trying to buy UNIDAC Industries,” she explained, “and you’ve got a company laptop associated with one of the guys he’s competing against.”

“Floyd Lawton,” Oliver supplied. He sounded absolutely certain, but Felicity knew he was wrong.

“No. Warren Patel.” She pointed at the name associated with the blueprints file. “Who’s Floyd Lawton?”

Oliver frowned in confusion. “He is an employee of Mr. Patel, evidently.”

“Queen!” Detective Lance growled. “You better be here because you remembered something important about your case.”

Oliver rose and returned the chair to where he’d gotten it. “Unfortunately not, sir. Miss Smoak was helping me with a computer problem.” He tucked the laptop under his arm, keeping the folder in place that covered the bullet holes.

“That’s Detective Smoak,” Lance corrected him.

Felicity quickly disconnected the external hard drive and slipped it back in her purse.

Oliver nodded at her. “Thank you, Detective.” He left the squad room, giving Lance a wide berth.

Her partner turned to her, eyebrows raised. “Computer problem?”

Felicity shrugged. “Detective Hilton mentioned my name.”

He stepped away, then turned back, a half-worried, half-angry look on his face. “Don’t fall under his spell, all right? Just don’t.”

Her eyes widened in surprise. “I wasn’t even considering it.”

“Good. Things with him never end well.” He spun away from her and approached the bulletin board. He gazed at the police artist’s sketch. “Now, we have a hooded man to track down.”


	6. Lucky Fortune

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Felicity makes a connection. And so does Quentin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your patience as this is a little later than usual. I had to re-watch an episode, which took a few tries due to a sketchy internet connection. And I had to get some more work done on my novel in order to justify the time I've spent on this fic over the last two months. :P Other things: any business talk in this chapter and subsequent chapters is b.s. I don't know anything about business. Cop stuff I know, but not business. I also made up a name for that Chinese restaurant Lance always meets Sara in, because I wanted to use it in this chapter and the next. And thank you for all the reviews and kudos and bookmarks and recommendations! I'm so grateful for all of it.

“Detective Smoak.”

Felicity sat up straighter. “Yes, sir.”

“Join me, please.” Detective Lance indicated the empty space next to where he stood in front of the bulletin board.

She went over to the board. The case of the guy in the hood had exploded in the last few days. He’d gone after James Holder, a rich, slightly shady corporate type.

It had been Felicity’s first murder scene, and her stomach began doing somersaults on the ride over. Fortunately for her, the dead man was floating facedown in his own pool, so she didn’t really have to look at him. But something must have shown on her face. Detective Lance took one look at her, then sent her back into the penthouse to get witness statements from Holder’s bodyguards.

Both men were being treated for arrow wounds by paramedics. They’d been attacked and then relieved of their guns. One man had lost consciousness briefly and never saw his assailant. The other described a tall man in leather, with a green hood pulled down low to cover most of his face. And a green arrow had been recovered from the scene, so obviously the hood guy was involved. But the autopsy told them that Holder had died from gunshot wounds, not arrow wounds. The bullets were sniper rounds, and they were poisoned. It was weird.

Just a couple of days later, Carl Rasmussen was shot, same M.O., but no arrows at the scene. Detective Lance was sure that the sniper and the hooded guy were two different people, but all the victims had gone up on the board anyway—the dead Queen kidnappers, Adam Hunt, James Holder, and Carl Rasmussen.

“I’m looking for connections,” Lance said as Felicity gazed at the photos. “What do you see?”

She took a deep breath and let it out, attempting to let go of every conclusion she’d reached so far. But like every other time she’d looked at the board, her eyes had immediately been drawn to the picture of James Holder. It was a cheesy corporate headshot, nothing special, but for the first time, Felicity realized it was his name that was familiar to her, not his face.

“Hmmm.”

“See something?” her partner asked.

She frowned. “Maybe.”

Felicity returned to her desk and grabbed her tablet. She vaguely remembered reading the article there, as opposed to her work computer or her laptop. She pulled up her browser history and quickly scrolled past all the music videos she’d watched on YouTube the night before. There, she found the article. She skimmed it briefly and then returned to the bulletin board.

“Here,” she said, handing the tablet to Detective Lance. She kept talking while he read the article. “The name James Holder sounded familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Then I remembered this article I read a couple of days before his murder. He’s kind of shady, which is something he has in common with Rasmussen, but we already knew that.”

Lance held the tablet out to her. She took it and continued without stopping for breath.

“What we didn’t know is that he has something else in common with Rasmussen,” she said. “They’re both prospective buyers for UNIDAC Industries, and they were both murdered in the same way, presumably by the same person, _before_ the auction.”

“Slow down,” said Lance. “How do you know all this? What the hell is UNIDAC Industries? And what’s this auction all about?” he asked, pointing at the tablet in her hands.

Felicity shrugged. “I keep up on tech news. UNIDAC Industries was a tech giant, but bad management drove it into receivership, and now the company is up for auction.”

“And both these guys were going to bid on it?” Lance tapped his fingers on Holder’s and Rasmussen’s photos.

“A few others too,” she said. “But only one of them is in Starling City right now.”

“I noticed,” said Lance. “Walter Steele, head of Queen Consolidated.”

“He could be a target,” said Felicity.

“He could be the _next_ target,” Lance said. He sighed heavily. “Much as I hate dealing with that family, I don’t want anyone’s death on my conscience. I’ll have to go that damn mansion again and warn them.”

“Do you want me to go with you?” Felicity asked. The idea both appealed to and repelled her at the same time. She was curious about the Queens and Mr. Steele, but she was worried about being sabotaged by her inexperience and nervous babble.

Lance shook his head. “I’ll take Hilton with me. I need you here, digging deeper into this auction thing. This shooter isn’t the one pulling the strings. Someone’s funding him and feeding him targets.”

While Detective Lance went on his unpleasant errand, Felicity did what little digging she could. She was hampered by police resources and legality. She had the skills to do much more, maybe even to identify the shooter, but she couldn’t accomplish it without leaving a trace. There would be a whisper, a footprint, something that could be traced back to her. She wouldn’t risk her career and the prosecution of multiple murders just to impress her new partner and speed along their case.

Lance and Hilton returned from the Queen mansion in much the same attitude as before, with Hilton rolling his eyes and Detective Lance stomping into the break room to noisily pour himself a cup of coffee.

“What happened?” Felicity asked Hilton. “Did he go toe to toe with Oliver Queen again?”

Hilton shook his head. “Moira Queen this time.”

“Yikes,” she muttered.

“You know why he didn’t want you to go, right?”

Felicity shrugged. “He needed me here,” she said, “not that I was able to do any good.”

The detective pulled up a chair and sat, leaning one elbow on her desk. “You shouldn’t take it personally,” he said. “It _is_ personal, but it’s about him, not you.”

“I’m listening.”

“I don’t think there’s anyone in this world Quentin hates more than Oliver Queen,” said Hilton. “Queen is the worst thing that ever happened to the Lances, and Quentin wants you as far away from him as possible. He’s trying to protect you.”

Felicity frowned. “Why? I was under the impression that he didn’t like me very much.”

“He doesn’t like anyone very much, but he likes you enough,” Hilton said. “And even if he didn’t he wouldn’t have thrown you to the wolves. You’re his partner.”

“Yeah, I’m still trying to figure out this whole partner thing,” Felicity confessed.

“Give it time and you will.” Hilton stood up. “The one thing you’ve got to remember is loyalty. Your partner above everyone else. Even yourself.”

Felicity swallowed hard as he walked away. That was a big responsibility, especially when your partner was a handful. The corners of her mouth quirked upward in a wry smile. Lance would probably say the same thing about her.

With Walter Steele now aware of the potential threat on his life, there was little more the police could do in the few days leading up to the auction. Felicity had submitted a request to access Interpol, but it was based on nothing but a hunch, and the bureaucratic wheel ground slowly.

When she was in Internal Affairs, she’d worked more independently and cut through the red tape with the blessing of her superiors. If she’d still been IA, she could have expedited her own request, but it would have been at the expense of her own well-being and peace of mind. Not worth it.

At home, her fingers itched to hack Interpol. So much so that she’d turned to all kinds of distractions, most recently by rewriting code so that she could beat the ridiculously hard level in Candy Crush that she’d been stuck on for weeks. She was in the middle of that coding the night before the auction when her phone began to buzz. Almost finished typing in a long string of commands, she ignored the phone until it demanded her attention by vibrating its way off the coffee table. She picked up the call and put it on speaker so she could continue to type.

“Yo, homey. What up?” she said.

“ ‘Scuse me?” inquired a gravelly voice on the other end.

“Detective Lance!” Felicity shoved her laptop aside and snatched up the phone. “I’m so sorry! That was not professional of me at all. I didn’t check the caller ID since I just assumed it was my friend Amy because she’s the only one who calls me this late, and that’s just how we talk to each other, but—”

“Take a breath, Smoak.”

She did. Several breaths, in fact, which gave him the chance to speak before she could tear off on another ramble.

“We need to meet,” he said. “There’s an all-night Chinese place on Second Avenue. Good tea. You know it?”

“Yeah,” she said. “But it’s kind of late. You don’t want to talk about it at work tomorrow?”

“No, and I don’t want to go into it over the phone either,” said Lance. “When I left the station tonight, I had a run-in with a suspect.”

“We have a suspect?”

“Yeah, our false lead in the sniper case. Shoots arrows, wears a green hood.”

“Oh my God,” Felicity breathed. “What happened?”

“Second Avenue. Throw on a jacket and get over here,” her partner said. “The place is called Tang’s Lucky Fortune Diner. Look for the red awning.”

“Got it, sir. I’ll be there in ten.”


	7. Tea and Sympathy and CVS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we learn that Felicity has pajamas with bacon on them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last update for at least a week! Sorry, my sweets. But this is now over 10,000 words. How much have I written on my novel in comparison? Maybe 2000. So I need to take some time to focus on that. I really wanted to get all the drama from the auction in this chapter, but then CVS happened. :P Enjoy it, though. The drama will be in the next chapter.

Chapter 7—Tea and Sympathy and CVS

 

It was late enough that Felicity was creeped out as she scrambled from streetlight to streetlight, making her way toward her car. She kept reminding herself that she had a gun and she knew how to use it.

Second Avenue was close enough to be a fairly short drive but far enough out of the Glades that she didn’t feel she needed to keep a death grip on her purse with one hand on the zipper. She slipped it into a parking spot one door down from the red awning, grabbed her purse, and headed for the diner.

The Lucky Fortune Diner smelled like burnt sugar and fried rice. Its interior was dimly lit, with few tables and a long counter. Detective Lance sat at the counter, midway down, a delicate handle-less in teacup in his large hand. He looked up as she approached, and indicated the stool next to his. She slid onto the round seat and hung the straps of her purse over her knee.

“Tea?” Lance pushed an empty cup toward her.

She shrugged. “Sure.”

He poured from a cast-iron teapot. The liquid was light green with a sickly yellow cast to it, but steam rose in white curls from the spout and the cup, and she was cold. She’d thrown on a fleece jacket over her pajamas, and it wasn’t enough to keep out the night’s chill. She wrapped her hands around the cup and breathed in the steam.

“Were you serious?” Felicity finally asked him. “About the guy in the hood?”

Lance rolled his eyes. “Would I have dragged you out of bed otherwise?” He gave her clothing a pointed look and snorted.

She knew she looked ridiculous with her hot pink fleece topping off her bacon pajamas and her feet shoved into a grimy pair of green Crocs. She hoped no one looked too closely at her socks. They had lobsters all over them, lobsters in boiling pots, wearing shades and holding wineglasses.

“You said to throw on a jacket and get over here,” Felicity said. “So I did. Are you going to tell me why?”

“I said I had a run-in with the hood guy. I meant it literally.” Lance turned his head to show her a red mark on his cheek that was darkening into a bruise.

Felicity’s hand reached out without her consent, but she quickly drew it back and took a gulp of her tea. The heat and the bitterness made her cough, and it was a few moments before she regained her composure.

“So he was confrontational,” her partner continued. “Slammed me onto the hood of a cruiser and growled in my ear.”

“What did he say?” she asked.

“He practically solved the damn case for us,” Detective Lance said. “He somehow made the connection that the shooter’s targeting these possible buyers, and he thinks he’s identified the guy.”

“What? How? Who is it?”

“The man in the hood says Interpol calls him Deadshot, but his real name is Floyd Lawton.”

Felicity’s head snapped up at the name she’d last heard fall from the lips of Oliver Queen. It took everything she had to school her features into a neutral expression.

“According to him, this Deadshot was hired by a guy named Warren Patel, and he’s going to target the auction tomorrow night,” Lance continued.

Another familiar name, the name tied to a computer riddled with bullet holes. She stared hard into her teacup.

“Then—and this is the best part—he asked for help,” said Lance.

Felicity let her jaw drop, grateful for the distraction. “The hooded guy? What does he want?”

“He said that any one of these buyers at the auction could be a target,” Lance explained. “He can’t protect them all, especially not in a space that big, whatever the hell that means.”

Her relief at moving her thoughts away from what Oliver Queen had said to her was gone. “The Exchange Building,” she said. “That’s where the auction will be held. And he’s right—it’s huge.”

In her mind’s eye, she could see the blueprints. Would they be useful? She still had the copied hard drive, but she wouldn’t be able to explain how she’d gotten it.

Lance refilled his teacup. “He also mentioned the poisoned bullets, which is the only thing he said that wasn’t news to me.” He glanced over at her. “How come he beat you to this Deadshot guy? I thought you were some kind of savant when it came to computers.”

“I’m the best,” Felicity said without guile or arrogance. “But I’m also a cop, so I can only go so far without breaking the law.”

Detective Lance huffed.

“I know I could have uncovered the identity of the shooter,” she continued, “but it would have involved doing things anywhere from slightly shady to downright illegal.” She looked up from her tea and held his gaze. “You know anything I could have found that way would be inadmissible in court. It could have sunk the case entirely.”

He nodded. “I kind of figured . . . but, for the record, could you have done it?”

“Absolutely,” she declared.

The sudden silence between them allowed her fear to rush back in, fear of her own slightly shady (and possibly illegal) activities on behalf of Oliver Queen being discovered. What did it mean? How did he fit into all this? His only connection besides the laptop was the fact that potential buyer Walter Steele was his stepfather.

Lance sat up and slapped his cup on the counter a little too loudly. Felicity jumped, but it was the jolt she needed to pull her out of the thoughts that had been dangerously close to the tip of her tongue.

“So what’s the next step?” she asked brightly, then immediately followed it up with a massive yawn.

Lance half-smiled “Sleep, obviously. Then we’ll need to get the goods on this guy Patel, at least enough for an arrest warrant. After that, we’ll get a team together to cover the auction tomorrow night. Nail this dirtbag before he has a chance to shoot anyone else.”

“‘We’?” Felicity asked.

“Yeah, you and me. Who else?”

She shrugged.

“You’re my partner, Smoak.” He nudged her arm. “We’re past that Crispin Bayne thing.”

Felicity smiled, but it quickly reversed itself into a frown as something else occurred to her. “So . . .” she began slowly, drawing out the word. “We’re helping the hooded guy. The hooded guy who’s had a hand in at least three deaths.”

“The way I see it, he helped us,” said Detective Lance. “He gave us the names. But I haven’t forgotten that he has blood on his hands. He has to answer for that, but we need to catch the shooter first.”

The diner’s owner was sweeping the floor and sighing noisily. Felicity had no idea what the place’s hours were, but it seemed like they should take the hint. Lance must have come to the same conclusion. He walked her to her car, which she found annoying. It was an empty gesture considering how close she’d parked to the restaurant. She was also annoyed that she’d been dragged away from Candy Crush at 10:30 at night. And was annoyed that a creep wearing a hood had solved their case by doing the one thing she couldn’t allow herself to do: access Interpol.

The next day, Felicity left her apartment early in order to catch Detective Lance at home. He still lived in the decent-sized house he’d once shared with his wife and daughters. As she climbed the front steps, she could almost feel the quiet loneliness of large, empty rooms. The ringing doorbell echoing inside the house only reinforced the impression.

Lance threw open the door, a snarly expression on his face. She took a step back, thinking this had been a really bad idea, and almost fell down the stairs. He caught her elbow and drew her in.

“Get in here, Smoak,” he grumbled. “My neighbors will start wondering why a divorced man with grown daughters has a blonde babysitter showing up at his door first thing in the morning.”

“‘Babysitter’?” Felicity mouthed silently.

“Now, what are you doing here?” he asked after he’d closed the door behind them. “Either you’re quitting or you’re propositioning me.”

“The answers to all of those are, ‘I’m here to help you,’ ‘No,’ and ‘Ew,’” she said, ticking them off on her fingers. “I mean, not ew, but—I am absolutely not propositioning you. You’re my partner, and you’re old enough to be my father. I mean, sure, I like older men, but not that much older—”

“Smoak,” said the detective. “Why don’t you stop now before I have a chance to get really offended?” He didn’t look mad yet, but he wasn’t smiling either. “Why is it you think I need help?”

She rose on tiptoe and reached up ( _way_ up) to take his chin in her hand. She turned his head to the right so she could see the bruise that the Hood had given him.

“That’s why,” she said, dropping her hand and lowering herself onto her feet again. “Have you looked in a mirror this morning?”

He shrugged. She didn’t think so. His jaw was still grizzled with yesterday’s stubble, and he had crazy Muppet hair.

“Still getting ready for work,” he said.

“Well, your face has a giant, puffy, purple mark on it,” she replied. “You can’t walk into work like that and not expect people to ask questions.”

“I wasn’t planning on telling anyone how I actually got it. I’m a decent liar.”

“But I’m not,” Felicity said. “You’ve heard me—I’m honest to a fault. If someone asks me directly, I have no idea what will come out of my mouth.”

“That could potentially become a problem,” Lance pointed out.

“I know, and I’ll work on it,” she said. “But for today, we need to cover that up.”

Lance turned away, mumbling that surely Laurel or Dinah had left some make-up laying around, but Felicity grabbed his elbow. He turned back to face her.

“If we don’t want anyone to ask questions,” she said, “we have to do this right. Where’s the nearest drugstore?”

Felicity thought browsing the CVS make-up aisle with Detective Lance at 7:30 in the morning definitely qualified as one of her life’s more surreal experiences. It was hard to bite back a laugh as she held up different shades of foundation and concealer to his face.

Lance insisted on paying for the items himself. “This stuff could come in handy later,” he said.

“Do you plan on getting beat up by hooded guys a lot?” she asked.

“He did not beat me up,” her partner replied. “Be nice to me, or I won’t get you anything when I stop at Starbucks.”

“ _You_ be nice to _me_ , or I won’t fix your face,” she retorted.

The half-overcast morning light sucked, but the parking lot was mostly empty. Lance sat on the opened tailgate of his SUV while she used the cosmetics to make his bruise disappear. She took a step back to examine her handiwork.

“Well, it’s still kind of puffy,” she said. “If anyone asks, you can just tell them you didn’t get much sleep.”

Detective Lance reached his hand up to his face, but Felicity slapped it away.

“Will it stay covered up all day?” he asked.

“I hope so, but it’s not like a charcoal drawing you can spray with fixative. You’ll have to be careful. No touching. And no sweating if you can help it.”

They got back in their own cars and returned to the road. Lance followed her, then pulled off within sight of a Starbucks sign.

Her phone buzzed.

“Order?” he asked before she could say anything.

“A peppermint mocha with an extra shot of espresso,” she said. “Without whipped cream. The whipped cream always melts before I get to work, and it leaves a layer of oil on top, which is just gross.”

“Got it.”

No one at the station seemed able to notice that Lance was sporting a bruise under a thick yet artfully applied layer of make-up. In fact, the desk sergeant remarked about how good he looked, that he must be getting more sleep. Felicity took that as a compliment on her skills. She hadn’t just hidden the bruise—she’d improved the canvas.


	8. Hit and Miss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Felicity has a long day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You all have been so patient! Thank you for all the reviews, kudos, and encouragement. I hope to not wait as long between this chapter and the next. I'm done with setting up and I'm eager to bring on the Olicity. :P Remember, if you're feeling Olicity-deprived, you can read my one-shot series, Quotable, which is pure, unadulterated Olicity fluff.

Felicity had never had a busier day. She and Lance spent most of the morning gathering enough on Warren Patel to get an arrest warrant. There was a meeting with Lt. Pike, and then another with the captain. It was a little intimidating, but by then they’d confirmed all the hooded vigilante’s information, including checking with Interpol (legally) about Deadshot. Building a case to bring down an international assassin was a big deal.

She was tired at the end of the work day, but the auction was still to come, and before that, the strategy session with the strike team. Felicity drank three cups of coffee during the session. She had to make a pit stop on the way to the car afterward, but it was an even trade since she already felt more alert than she had in hours.

At first, Lance had wanted her on the perimeter, but he capitulated after a brief argument an instantly regretted jab on her part that she wasn’t his daughter.

“Fine, then,” he’d groused. “If you’re going in, then you’re going on the team that will arrest Patel.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but he held up his hand.

“No more arguing, Smoak. Them’s the rules.”

“What about Detective Hilton?” she asked. “You already put him on the team to grab Patel.”

“And there he’ll stay,” said Lance. “Someone’s got to keep an eye on you, rookie.”

“I’m not a rookie,” she said, raising her voice. Then she remembered they weren’t alone in the conference room. She dropped her tone a few notches. “I’m not a rookie, and there is no reason for you to relegate me to the background.”

He raised his hand and then let it fall. “You’re not a rookie cop, but you’re a rookie detective. Like it or not, you’re the new kid on the block, and I am not gonna put the newbie smack in the middle of danger on a major case. You’re going with Hilton to arrest Patel. End of discussion.”

She sighed noisily. “This partnership is really going to suck if you don’t trust me.”

“It’s not about trust, Detective,” he said on his way to the door. “It’s common sense.”

So Felicity donned her Kevlar and climbed into an SUV driven by Detective Hilton and crammed with members of the strike team. No one spoke on the drive to the Exchange Building except for Hilton, who occasionally murmured into the radio. She was grateful for the opportunity to seethe at Lance in silence.

It didn’t matter what he said, what excuses he made. It all boiled down to him not trusting her to be able to handle herself in this kind of high-pressure, dangerous situation. And okay, she hadn’t exactly proven herself capable yet, what with almost puking at the Holder crime scene, and the Crispin Bayne debacle. But they were partners. Her and Detective Lance, not her and Hilton. They should be working together, and the fact that they weren’t felt like a betrayal.

Detective Lance was in charge when they reached the perimeter, barking orders in person and into his radio. Felicity was just another cog in the machine, she realized.

The auction hadn’t started yet, but cocktail hour was in full swing. Felicity smoothed down her ponytail and followed Hilton, keeping just a step ahead of the uniformed officers accompanying them. She spared a backward glance and saw Detective Lance approach Oliver Queen. _Oliver Queen_. What was _he_ doing there? She stopped in her tracks, and one of the officers stumbled into her. He gave her a dirty look. She jogged a few steps to catch up to Hilton. Figuring out that little mystery would have to wait.

They found Warren Patel in one of the building’s offices. He went into custody without incident. Hilton even let Felicity cuff him once she blabbed that she hadn’t cuffed anyone since she was in Cybercrimes. Thank goodness she’d stopped herself before saying why she hadn’t. Then all of their radios exploded with chatter.

The call of shots fired was the loudest and most urgent. What followed was mostly gibberish to Felicity’s ears. She’d learned all the codes in the police academy, but each officer was assigned a code and the various teams all had designations. Hilton directed the uniformed officers to hustle Patel out of the building and into a cruiser. Then he nodded at Felicity to come with him.

The lobby was in chaos. A waiter with a hole in his chest lay amidst a sea of broken glass, spilled champagne, and blood. Tons of dressed up people were screaming, hiding under tables and behind planters. Felicity spotted Lance standing up and helping a tall man to his feet. It was Walter Steele, the CEO of Queen Consolidated. They were very close to the waiter who had been shot. Taking in the whole scene, she saw a door on the far side of the room just closing. Her instinct was to go to it, to see who’d just left. But Detective Lance beckoned to her.

“What happened?” she asked him.

His eyes were a little wild, his hair mussed. “He took the shot,” said Lance. “I was a little faster.” He nodded at Mr. Steele, then cut his eyes over to the dead waiter.

“Thank you for saving my life, Detective,” said the older man in a crisp British accent. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to find my wife and stepdaughter.”

“Of course,” Lance replied. “We’ll need you back here at some point to make a witness statement, but I think I saw your bodyguard take them that way.” He pointed toward the other end of the lobby, and Felicity’s gaze followed.

Bodyguard? The man with his hand on Moira Queen’s shoulder sure looked like one. His arms were huge. But if he was Mr. Steele’s bodyguard, why would he have left the man’s side in order to protect his family? She frowned. Mr. Steele must have ordered him to. That’s the only thing that made sense.

Felicity was at the Exchange Building long past midnight, taking witness statements and running interference between Detective Lance and all the rich people who were angry that their little soiree/business auction had exploded into a crime scene. Deadshot had fled the scene, leaving behind a small pool of his own blood and one dead officer. How the sniper had gotten injured was a mystery, since the cop didn’t have a chance to fire his own weapon.

Through bleary, tired eyes, she watched as the Queen/Steele family departed. Moira Queen-Steele’s thank-you’s to Detective Lance were frosty, not that Felicity could blame her. One life-saving moment couldn’t exactly erase their history. She looked for Oliver and the bodyguard, but they were nowhere to be seen.

When Lance told her to go home at 2:45 in the morning, she didn’t protest. She got a uniformed officer to drive her back to the station, where she shed her Kevlar and quickly gathered her things to head home. Thank God there was an empty parking space right in front of her building. Felicity drove into it and stumbled into her apartment.

Her shirt was wrinkled and soaked with sweat, and her ponytail was miles from neat. Jpeg rubbed against her legs, alternately purring and loudly squawking to be fed. Once that was taken care of, she stripped off her work clothes and stepped into the shower. A soak in the tub sounded more enticing, but she had to be up and awake in just four hours. A bath would relax her too much—she’d just ended up sleeping through her alarm.

After twisting her wet hair into a braid, she threw on her bacon pajamas and fell into bed. Jpeg jumped up beside her and mashed himself against her back, purring. But when Felicity closed her eyes, she only saw the dead waiter. The blossom of red on his white jacket. His hand splayed over broken glass. She shook her head. She was in Major Crimes now—she’d have to find some way to cope with all the death she was going to encounter.

She gave up on sleep after an hour. Plied with coffee and ice cream, which seemed the only sensible thing to eat at 4:15 a.m., Felicity used her tablet and her mad internet skills to learn everything she could about Oliver Queen, and to try to identify his bodyguard. With the latter, she had no real starting point, just a face she knew she’d recognize if she saw it again. Or those massive arms. But he was a ghost, for all she could tell. He must have been a new addition to the entourage, or he would have shown up in recent photos. Since his return, Oliver had gotten very good at giving the media the slip, so there wasn’t much to be found online after the initial publicity and a few snaps of him out partying with Tommy Merlyn.

With a yawn, she rolled her head back and forth, working the kinks out of her neck. It was time to get dressed for work.


	9. To Hack or Not to Hack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Felicity has a minor moral dilemma.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this isn't the most exciting chapter, but I have a lot to cover from these episodes, and it just felt like a good place to end the chapter. Do not despair. Chapter 10 is already underway.

When she arrived at police headquarters the next morning, Felicity went straight to the break room for coffee. She filled her TARDIS mug to the brim, dumped in a mess of cream and sugar without bothering to measure or even let her eyes focus properly, and stumbled to her desk. She was surprised to find Laurel Lance standing next to it.

“Um, hi,” Felicity said to her. “Can I h—” She let loose a yawn so big that it felt like her face split in half. “Sorry. Is there something I can help you with?”

“Just waiting for my father to show up,” the woman said. “Is that a square mug?”

“Yeah, it is,” said Felicity. “It’s the TARDIS, and the TARDIS appears as a police box, so . . . square mug.”

“What you just said made no sense, Smoak. You better drink down that coffee. You need it.”

Felicity turned around to see Detective Lance approaching. He was carrying a tall Starbucks cup, and there was a spring in his step that made her feel like snarling. He had to have gotten less sleep than she did, but he was freshly shaven and his hair was tamed and he was grinning. Felicity wasn’t sure she could walk a straight line just then, let alone smile.

“So how much sleep did you not get last night, Dad?” Laurel asked. “And how much coffee have you already had?”

“So much coffee,” said Lance. “If you cut me right now, I would bleed coffee. Detective Smoak here is clearly running behind.”

“But it’s a square mug,” Laurel said, frowning. “How do you drink from it?”

“Very carefully,” Felicity replied. She maneuvered around them and sank into her chair. Her stomach rumbled, and she took a big gulp of coffee to cover up the sound. Too much ice cream at the crack of dawn.

“So what brings you to my workplace, daughter?” Lance asked.

“I wanted to ask you about the Declan case.”

Felicity’s ears perked up. She sipped at her coffee and pulled out her tablet. She knew about the Declan case—everyone did. She’d seen the story on the news about five times while she was getting ready for work. Peter Declan was scheduled to be executed soon. He’d been sentenced to death for killing his wife in their daughter’s bedroom.

“Peter Declan? It wasn’t my case, but everyone knew about it. What can I tell you?”

“I heard his wife was about to blow the whistle on her boss before she died,” Laurel said. “Was that angle ever pursued in the case?”

“Yeah, Declan told the cops that his wife met with her supervisor and raised her concerns, but the detectives talked to her supervisor.” Lance squinted. “Istook. Matt Istook was his name. Anyway, he said that meeting never took place. And the evidence against Declan was solid.”

Laurel seemed satisfied with that information. She said goodbye to her father and left.

The day was a blur of paperwork on the attempted assassination of Walter Steele and the murders they’d pinned on Deadshot. Felicity drank so much coffee that her hands started to shake, and she still felt as if she was barely functioning. Then Detective Lance got a phone call, and she watched his eyes go from tired to blazing with anger. He mumbled a “thanks” and ended the call.

Felicity arched her eyebrow in a silent inquiry.

“I need to pay my daughter a visit,” he said. “I’ll be back in a few.” He practically ran from the squad room.

For the next ten minutes, Felicity debated whether or not to hack Detective Lance’s phone to find out who’d called him. Did her concern outweigh what was a massive betrayal of trust? Did her concern outweigh illegal activity? She juggled these questions while pacing behind her desk, while buying a sugary soda from the vending machine, and while visiting the ladies’ room. In the end, she’d taken too much time thinking over. Detective Lance returned after twenty minutes, looking more furious than when he’d left.

“I take it that didn’t go well,” she ventured.

“No, it did not.” He dropped into his chair. “My daughter is lying to me. She walked in here this morning, and she lied to my face. We weren’t—” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “We weren’t supposed to do that. When her mother left, when it was just us, we agreed to be honest with each other. But she lied to me. She’s neck-deep in the Peter Declan case.”

Felicity frowned. “But . . . isn’t that case closed? Isn’t he the one who’s going to be executed at the end of the week?”

“That’s the one,” Lance said. “But Laurel’s got it in her head that he’s innocent, and she’s on a mission now. She won’t let it go.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Felicity asked. She gulped down some more coffee while she waited for an answer.

“It’s . . . if he’s truly innocent, that’s good. But this whole thing is bad. So bad.”

She had a feeling there was more to the story than what he’d told her. She was starting to wish she’d gone ahead and hacked his phone.

Felicity spent the rest of the day on paperwork. Lance made an effort, but it was pretty clear his thoughts were elsewhere. Eventually he gave up all pretense of trying to help and went down to the records room to look at the Peter Declan files. By six o’clock, Felicity was pretty sure she’d finished everything and was clearing off her desk when the squad room began to buzz. She went to the break room to rinse out her mug and pulled aside the first person she saw, some vice detective.

“What’s going on?” she asked him.

He must have just come off an undercover assignment because he badly needed a shave and he smelled like he’d been hiding behind a Dumpster. He swiped a sleeve across his nose and sniffed.

“Riot,” he said. “Iron Heights.”

“The prison?” she said like an idiot. Of course the prison. There was nothing else in Starling City called Iron Heights.

“Yeah,” the detective said. “Chances are, someone from your squad will be called out before this is over.”

Meaning, someone will be murdered before this is over. Felicity couldn’t suppress an involuntary shiver. She forgot all about rinsing her coffee mug and returned to her desk. She gathered up her things, not really knowing what else to do. It wasn’t like she could hang around, waiting for an inmate to shiv another. Was it shiv? Or was it shank?

As she pondered the prison lingo, Detective Lance stalked into the squad room. She couldn’t tell if he was furious or terrified, or both. He strode right up to her desk and snapped his fingers. They were definitely going to have a conversation about that later, when he wasn’t looking so scary.

“Smoak,” he said like it was a command. “Let’s go.”

She grabbed her purse and dropped her mug into it. “Where to?” she asked.

“Iron Heights. Laurel’s there.”


	10. Where Your Loyalty Lies . . . and Lies and Lies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Felicity has a moral dilemma.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy cow, this chapter turned out to be a beast. I'm totally exhausted and not feeling well, so I apologize for any typos I may have missed by not reading it over. And I know there are some italics in this, but I'm too tired to put them in. Much thanks to thatmasquedgirl, who looked up some dialogue for me. Ugh. I need a nap now.

Detective Lance drove his personal car to Iron Heights, at speeds that would make a NASCAR driver nervous. He wasn’t talking, and they had no police radio to tell them what was happening at the prison. Honestly, Felicity wasn’t really sure why she was accompanying him on this trip. If it was about his daughter, then it was personal and not her place. If it was about a potential Major Crimes case, they should have taken a car from the motor pool and gotten radios and maybe even backup. She had her gun in her purse, but she didn’t want to go into the prison unless she absolutely had to.

The guards at the outer gate were preoccupied, one on the phone, the other on the radio. The guy on the radio leaned out of the booth, glanced at the gold shield Lance held up, and waved them on. Inside the gate, it appeared to Felicity as if chaos reigned, guards running everywhere, SCPD officers mixing with SWAT teams, and civilian prison employees here and there. But they had to have trained for this, with contingency plans in place.

Lance drove as close to the main building as he could get, nearly rear-ending an ambulance. An ambulance. Her stomach flipped.

“How do you know Laurel’s in there?” she asked.

“She told me she was going to meet with Declan.” He flung open his door and got out, not bothering to shut it behind him.

Felicity got out of the car and shut her door. She walked around the front of the vehicle and ducked her head into the driver’s side. She took the keys from the ignition, pocketed them, and closed the door. Then she hustled to follow her partner.

“Dad!” Laurel ran to her father. She looked . . . surprisingly okay for having escaped a prison riot. Her tear-stained face and the shock blanket draped over her shoulders were the only indicators that she’d just survived a traumatic experience.

“Laurel, sweetie. What are you—” Lance crushed his daughter in a frantic embrace.

“I’m all right,” said Laurel, pulling back a bit.

“You sure?”

Laurel hugged Detective Lance again. Felicity felt increasingly uncomfortable. Other people’s emotional family stuff was awkward and weird. Family stuff and a new partnership were doubly weird.

“I’m sorry about what I said to you.” Laurel brushed away a tear.

“Yeah, well, you were right,” said Lance. “Ankov just copped to Camille Declan’s murder. We got the wrong guy.”

Felicity’s mouth dropped open. Who was Ankov? And Peter Declan really was innocent?

“Now listen to me, Laurel,” Detective Lance continued. “I’m right too. I’m right about him. He’s dangerous. He’s outside the law.”

Now who was he talking about?

“I know. He’s a killer,” Laurel replied. “There’s something inside of him that’s . . . it’s not human. The things that I’ve seen, I—it was awful.”

As she turned away from the moment of vulnerability, a flash of movement on the rooftop caught Felicity’s eye. A hooded figure turned away and then disappeared into the shadows. The vigilante. She’d been staring at the police sketch of the defined jaw line below that hood for days now. What was he doing at the prison?

Lance put his arm around Laurel and began walking her toward the car. “Let’s get you home, sweetie. How’d he get into that prison anyway, huh? A grown man in an outfit and a hood. That kind of stands out a little, doesn’t it?”

Felicity couldn’t keep quiet any longer. “The vigilante? He was here?”

Laurel eyed Felicity, then turned back to her father. “He actually wasn’t wearing the outfit this time. He was in a prison guard uniform and a ski mask.”

Lance stared.

“What?” Laurel asked.

“Nothing. I just had an idea. Get in the car, both of you.”

“Bossy,” Felicity mumbled as she drew the keys from her pocket and handed them to the detective. She got in the back seat as Lance fussed over his daughter, going so far as to buckle her in himself.

Felicity waited to speak until she could see the prison in the rear-view mirror. Then all the questions she’d be hanging onto began tumbling out.

“So when were you going to tell me any of this?” she asked, glaring at the back of his head. Muppet hair again. “The Declan case, the new confession, the fact that your daughter is working with the vigilante that’s been killing people—”

“Was,” Lance said. “She’s not anymore. That’s done.” He glanced over at Laurel. “Right, sweetie?”

“He’s a killer,” Laurel reiterated. “I wasn’t sure about him when he first approached me, but seeing him inside that prison left no doubt in my mind. He would have killed that inmate if I hadn’t stopped him, and the look in his eyes when I did—” She shuddered, pulling the blanket tighter around herself.

“I’m just saying,” Felicity continued. “It would have been nice to know this stuff before now. Well, not nice because murder, but you know what I mean. Helpful. It would have been helpful. Beneficial to our partnership. Because we’re partners, remember?” She locked eyes with him in the rear-view mirror. “I realize I have two strikes against me because I’m young and I’m a woman, but you’re not doing this partnership any favors by starting out lying to me.”

As soon as the words left her mouth, a lump formed in her throat. She’d started out lying to him. She’d done it first.

“She has a point, Dad,” said Laurel.

“Hey, now, whose side are you on?” he joked. “Isn’t half this mess your fault?”

“A third,” Laurel said. “One-third me, one-third you, and one-third the vigilante.”

“I’m pretty sure his third is slightly bigger than mine.”

“Well, your third is definitely bigger than my third.”

“Excuse me?” said Lance. “Who was working with the vigilante again?”

He was half-smiling, as if it was funny. What a weird family. His eyes caught hers again in the rear-view mirror.

“Smoak, I want to drop Laurel off at her apartment, and then you and I are going back to the station.”

“Well, good, because my car is still there,” said Felicity. “I have a cat at home that needs to be fed.”

“Your last name is Smoak?” Laurel turned in her seat to look at Felicity. “Has he started with the bad puns yet?”

Felicity shook her head. “No, but it won’t be anything I haven’t heard before.”

“I’m sure. When I said bad, I meant bad.”

“Change of subject,” said Lance. “You’re not going home just yet, Detective.”

“I’m not?” Felicity said.

“You’re not. What Laurel said earlier about this hooded guy’s getup gave me an idea. We have some surveillance footage to look over.”

Detective Lance made Felicity go with him to walk Laurel right to her door. There was a brief argument, as Felicity thought it was ridiculous that she couldn’t wait in the car—“I have a gun!”—but Lance was forceful and Felicity was overwhelmed with guilt for holding back the information she’d recovered for Oliver Queen. She stood just inside the doorway, feeling awkward and intrusive, as Lance fussed over his daughter some more, making her a cup of tea and tucking a blanket around her as she sat on her couch.

Finally, they were in the car again, headed back to the station. Detective Lance sighed heavily.

“You’re right,” he said. “I shouldn’t have kept you in the dark about what I was doing.”

She made an unintelligible noise, not trusting herself enough to speak.

“I should have told you as soon as I realized Laurel was lying to me.” He parked in a fire lane outside the station. “This whole trust thing—I kind of stink at it, for reasons I’m sure you’ve heard about. But that’s no way to start a partnership.”

“It’s okay,” said Felicity. “I mean, it’s not okay okay, but I’m over it. So you can stop agonizing about it or punishing yourself or whatever. I’m actually stuck on the part where you said we’re going over surveillance footage.”

Lance smiled. “I had a thought. It’s kind of a shot in the dark, but it could give us a lead.”

She followed him into the station. He threaded his way through the desks in the squad room, stopping at his own. He unlocked a drawer, rifled through it, and came up with a disk. He nodded for her to follow him again.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“To the DVD player in the conference room.”

“What’s showing?”

“Security camera feeds from the Exchange Building,” he replied.

Lance loaded the disk and used the remote to skip ahead. The time stamp jumped forward in half-hour increments, and then he slowed it down to around the time of the shooting.

“What exactly are we looking for?” she asked.

“Anything out of the ordinary.”

She could see that the camera was aimed at a stairwell. The door was clearly visible, as was the metal trash can next to it.

“What’s that?” Felicity asked.

“What?”

“Right there,” she said, pointing to the screen. She took the remote from him and backed up the video a few seconds.

The door opened and a tall figure stepped into the frame. He took the cover off the trash can and pulled out a bundle and a long . . .

“Is that a bow?” Lance asked.

Felicity slowed the video down even more, until it was playing frame by frame. With jerky movements, the tall figure slung the bundle over his shoulder and made for the stairs. He didn’t glance at the camera, but he was looking straight ahead. She hit the pause button, and Oliver Queen’s face froze on the screen.

“We got him!”

Felicity jumped when Lance shouted. She dragged her gaze away from the image. Lance was waving the remote around like she would have if she’d been really fired up about something.

“I knew it!” he said. “I knew that smug smartass was up to no good.”

Detective Lance was off and running, and for the next couple of hours, it was all she could do just to keep up. It seemed so tenuous, the assumption that Oliver Queen was the vigilante based almost entirely on a grainy video from one crime scene. Felicity had somehow briefly nodded off while sitting upright in the middle of a conversation, and it was then that Lance finally told her to go home.

Home. Sleep. It sounded tempting on the surface, but Felicity knew she would be wide awake as soon as her head hit the pillow. When she entered her apartment, Jpeg walked over to her, turned his back, and sat down. He only did that when he was really mad at her for being gone so long. She fed him, and he went right back to ignoring her.

Felicity changed into pajamas and sat on the couch. She didn’t think she could sleep now if she tried. Caffeine and guilt was a potent combination. The TV was on, tuned to an episode of Project Runway from her DVR, but her mind was focused elsewhere.

She’d lied to her partner, and she’d done it just days into their partnership. And then she busted him for doing the exact same thing.

“Oh, I am bad,” she moaned, putting her head in her hands. “I am a bad, bad person.”

Felicity sat up. It was time to consider her options.

“I can’t come clean with him now,” she said. “I’ll look like a hypocrite—which I am—and he’ll probably request a new partner and I’ll get sent back to I.A.” She suppressed a shudder at that thought. “So I just keep it to myself, right?” she asked Jpeg. He was unmoved, sitting next to her with his back turned.

“Okay, so I keep it to myself, then.” Felicity picked at a loose thread on the arm of the couch. “But Oliver . . . I have to actually face him tomorrow. I have to help arrest him, Jpeg.” The cat’s black ears twitched. “He could tell Detective Lance that I helped him. Oh my God, did I help the vigilante kill someone?”

There would definitely be no sleeping now. She felt betrayed, though she knew that wasn’t logical. Betrayed by Oliver Queen’s charming demeanor and handsome face. How was she to reconcile the sincerity she’d seen in his eyes with what Laurel had said about looking at the vigilante and seeing something inhuman within?

They met in the squad room at nine the next morning, Felicity, Detective Lance, Detective Hilton, and two uniformed officers. It seemed like overkill until Felicity thought back on all the crimes the vigilante was tied to—violent crimes. Any objections she might have had died on her lips. Until they were actually in the SUV, on their way to the Queen mansion with an arrest warrant in hand.

“Are we really sure about this?” she asked. “I mean, we’re about to charge into the home of one of the richest families in the country to arrest the heir for murder.”

“And vigilantism,” Lance added. “It’s in the warrant.”

“And obviously having a warrant means there’s at least some evidence, but really, all we have is a few seconds of video footage plus Oliver Queen’s habit of ditching his bodyguards and disappearing for hours.” She pushed her glasses up on her nose.

“Are you flaking out on me, Smoak?” he asked. “Because we’re partners, remember? We’re in this together.”

“I’m—I’m in,” Felicity said hesitantly. “I just . . .” She sighed. “I’m in.”

“Good.”

Felicity had been wildly curious about the Queen mansion and the Queens themselves for days now. She’d seen the house in photos, but it was massive in person. As she hopped down from the SUV, she craned her neck to take in the whole building. It had an air of decay to it, like a crumbling castle.

Detective Lance led the way, beginning to swagger as he approached the front doors. A maid in a uniform opened the door before Lance could knock.

“May I help you?” she asked.

“I doubt it very much,” said Lance, “unless you can point us in the direction of Mr. Queen.”

The maid’s eyebrows rose to her hairline. She raised her hand and indicated a hallway off to the left. Lance charged in that direction, Felicity, Hilton, and the other cops following in his wake. The hallway opened into a spacious, ornately decorated room. Maybe a living room, but it was the first one Felicity had ever seen (outside of magazines) that didn’t have a TV. Everything was cream and shades of gold, and standing in the middle of it were Oliver Queen and his bodyguard. The two men dropped their handshake.

Oliver rolled his eyes. “What now, Detective?” He seemed to be making a point of not looking at Felicity. She hoped that meant he wouldn't say anything about their previous contact, but there was no way to let him know that she wouldn't say anything either.

“Oliver Jonas Queen, you are under arrest for obstruction of justice, aggravated assault, trespassing, acting as a vigilante, and murder.”

A teenage girl with sleep-rumpled hair burst into the room as Lance rattled off the charges. “Ollie, what’s going on?” she asked.

“Let’s go.” Detective Lance snapped his fingers, and the two uniformed officers stepped forward to slap a pair of handcuffs on the young billionaire.

“Ollie!” The girl launched herself at the cop with his hand on Oliver’s elbow, but Hilton grabbed her and held her back as Oliver was led from the room.

There was a fire in the girl’s eyes that Felicity recognized. Anger and fear all wrapped together in a crackling, sparking mess. Felicity caught Hilton’s gaze and nodded toward the girl she knew to be Oliver’s sister. Hilton inclined his head and let go of her, then headed off in the direction Lance and the other cops had taken Oliver Queen.

Felicity put her hand on Thea Queen’s shoulder, but the girl shook her off. She glared at Felicity, and then looked her up and down, assessing her.

“Who are you?” Thea demanded. “You’re too young to be a cop. What are you doing with those stupid jerks who just took my brother away?”

“It’s not important,” said Felicity. “Look, I know you’re upset, but if you go after them, they’ll just arrest you too.”

Thea’s shoulders slumped.

“Call your mom, okay? And have her call a lawyer.” Felicity smiled a little. It was easier to lie with a smile on her face. “It’s going to be okay.”


	11. Comrades With Arms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Felicity cops a feel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who continues to read and review. Almost 5000 hits! That's pretty freaking awesome! This chapter is dedicated to all you lovely people who've hung in there so far. This contains a little more of AU Felicity's backstory. Have a little Olicity. :D

Felicity drove the SUV back to police headquarters. Detective Lance rode in the passenger seat and went over his notes, mumbling to himself. There would only be a small window of time before the Queen family attorneys showed up, and Lance wasn’t going to waste one second.

While they returned their vehicle to the motor pool, Oliver Queen went through booking, a process he was intimately familiar with. Lance practically skipped to the interview room. Felicity tried dragging her feet, but her excuses fell flat. She wasn’t getting out of this. Lance, so sure he’d gotten his man, was determined to turn every part of this into a teachable moment for his new young partner.

“I’ll do all the talking,” said Lance, stopping just outside the room. “Your job is to observe. Watch his face, his body language. See how he reacts to my questions.”

He was basically giving her permission to stare at a hot guy, but Felicity took little joy in that thought. How could she focus on anything other than the secret she was keeping? How could she look at Oliver—Mr. Queen—and not wonder if he was going to speak up and turn her entire world upside-down? Okay, maybe that was a little overdramatic, but at the very least it would mean the end of this partnership and her career as a detective. And she couldn’t go back to Internal Affairs or Cybercrimes. She just couldn’t.

“Smoak.”

She glanced up. Way up. It was a bad day to wear flats.

“After you,” said Lance. He pushed open the door and held it so she could go in ahead of him.

Felicity kept her gaze trained on the opposite wall, so she was able to take things in without making eye contact. She stood off to one side of the door as Lance took a seat at the table. Oliver Queen sat across from him, his hands folded in front of him, an irritated expression on his face. Felicity chewed on the cap of her pen, trying to figure out how to observe him without looking him in the eye. She chose to stare at the mole below the right corner of his mouth.

“This is a mistake,” he said to Lance as the detective clicked his pen and opened a folder.

“I’ll be asking you a few questions, standard stuff for the report,” said Lance. “Have you been arrested before?” He glanced up. “That’s okay. I know the answer to that one. Plenty of times.”

Oliver’s jaw tightened. “Like I said, this is a mistake.”

“Far as I can tell, the only mistake I made was not shooting you down at the docks when I had a chance.”

"I am not who you think I am,” said Oliver.

“Oh, you’re exactly who I think you are,” Lance snapped, throwing down his pen. “You’re a dangerous menace who doesn’t care about who he hurts, except now you’re doing it with bows and arrows instead of trust funds and yachts.”

This was a bad idea. When she’d walked into the room, Felicity’s biggest fear had been that Oliver would give her up. Now she wondered if she was going to have to hold Detective Lance back from jumping on the table and throttling him.

Oliver didn’t seem worried, though. He leaned forward. “Detective, you hate me. I get it. But that doesn’t make me a vigilante.”

“No,” said Lance. “The security camera footage of you at the UNIDAC auction with the green hood does that pretty well.”

“And as I said again—” Oliver’s tone turned condescending. “I ran into the stairwell once I heard the shooting, I saw a duffel that I thought maybe belonged to the shooter, I grabbed it, looked inside, and saw a hood.”

“And what? You took it out with you?” Lance scoffed. “Because we can’t find it. And what about harassing Adam Hunt? That just happened to take place right across the street from your little homecoming bash.”

Oliver leaned back, with a smile that looked more like a grimace. “Pure coincidences,” he said. Felicity was inclined to agree.

“No,” Lance said, leaning back as well. “When they pile up like that, it becomes evidence.”

Felicity looked at the back of her partner’s head, unable to keep a neutral expression on her face.

“That’s two coincidences,” she said. “The security footage and the Adam Hunt thing. Does two of something constitute a pile?”

A uniformed officer opened the door and poked his head in. “His parents are here,” he said in Lance’s direction.

“Tell ‘em to wait.”

Oliver was an adult. He could be questioned alone, but if the formidable Moira Queen had brought a lawyer . . .

“I want to see my son,” the Queen matriarch demanded, pushing past the officer to enter the room. Felicity moved farther to the side, hoping to stay invisible.

“I’m in the middle of an interrogation here.” Lance stood.

Moira Queen was smartly and elegantly dressed, her ash blonde hair coiffed in controlled waves. Felicity smoothed a hand over her own unruly ponytail.

“Detective Lance, I know you hate my family, but I had no idea that you’d go so far as to arrest my son without any grounds whatsoever.” Her eyes flashed. Anyone else would have been intimidated by her presence and the wealth and influence behind it, but Lance’s eyes flashed in response. Felicity was back to worrying about how she could hold him back.

“I have solid grounds, and I have evidence,” Lance said through gritted teeth.

“Which you will present to Mr. Queen’s attorney when he gets here.” Walter Steele strode into the room. He was as tall as Detective Lance, but he somehow seemed less scary than Mrs. Queen. Felicity stood a little straighter. “Until then, this interrogation is over, Detective.”

Lance sighed through his nose. “Sure. You have fifteen minutes.” He nodded at Felicity. She approached the door he held open for her, but she risked a quick glance over her shoulder. Oliver was still leaning back in his chair, almost smiling. He caught her eye and winked, then turned back to his mother.

Felicity followed Lance into the hallway. Lucky for her, he was too angry to notice her blushing.

“Damn!” he said, slapping his fist into his palm. “He’ll be lawyered up now, and there goes our chance of getting anything out of him.”

“What now?” Felicity asked.

“I’m sure they’ll push for a quick arraignment, since they won’t want their precious darling to spend a night in jail,” Lance said.

“Do you really think this will go to trial?”

He shrugged. “It’s a crap shoot, but if the D. A. can just get him on the stand, we might get some answers.”

It turned out that the D.A. was extremely pissed. She demanded that Detective Lance meet her at her office immediately. Felicity was left to hang around until Moira Queen and Walter Steele walked out of the interview room, arguing quietly.

“You know this is a terrible idea,” said Mrs. Queen.

“He’s a grown man, Moira.” Steele took her elbow and guided her down the hallway, giving Felicity a brief nod as he passed. “It’s what he wants.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t trust his judgment right now.”

“I agree the choice is problematic at best, but consider the alternative,” Mr. Steele said. “Arguing his own case?”

“That’s something. At least Laurel finished school.” Her voice trailed off as they moved out of earshot.

Laurel? Oliver Queen wanted Laurel Lance, his ex, to defend him in court? Felicity didn’t trust his judgment either. It took a special kind of stupid to pick a lawyer who knew him in the biblical sense, but she probably hated him too for cheating on her with her sister and getting her killed. Ridiculous.

Felicity went back into the interview room.

Oliver arched an eyebrow. “I thought my family made it clear that I’m done talking without my lawyer.”

“I’m not here to ask you questions, Mr. Queen,” she said, pushing her glasses up on her nose. “I’m here to take you to your cell.”

“Great.” He got to his feet.

 he’d dealt with plenty of guys in handcuffs before. Bile rose in her throat at the thought of her arrests in Cybercrimes.

“Are you okay?” Oliver asked. “You just went completely pale.”

“I’m fine,” Felicity replied.

She swallowed hard. He was just another suspect. A murder suspect, not a pervert. It should have made her nervous, but it was actually a comforting thought. Like she would with any other perp, she put her hand on his arm to steer him toward the door.

“Holy crap! Are you freaking kidding me?” The bicep under her fingers was big and rock-hard. And his sweater, which fit him really well, was deceptively soft. But that arm—wow. Was the rest of his body like that?

“Excuse me?” Oliver glanced down at her small hand with its blue-painted nails.

“ _Crap_ . Did I say that out loud?” she asked.

“Say what out loud?”

“Um. Nothing. Let’s go to your cell now, shall we?” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she was mentally berating herself. It had sounded as if she was asking his permission. “I have to cuff you again,” she said. “Standard procedure.”

“No problem,” he said, putting his hands together behind his back. “It’s not like it’s the first time.”

Felicity’s super-cute polka-dotted blazer had big pockets, plenty of space for her shiny new detective’s shield and her handcuffs. They were a new pair. Once she left Cybercrimes for Internal Affairs, she ended up tossing the old ones in a Dumpster near her apartment. In her eyes, they were contaminated, and she didn’t want them anywhere near her. She would have melted them down if she knew how.

She handcuffed him, making sure they were tight. Detective Lance’s evidence was flimsy and circumstantial, but if Oliver really was the hooded vigilante, she wasn’t taking any chances.

“After you,” she said, gesturing toward the open door. He went out, and she followed. Once they were side by side in the hallway, she took his arm again.

It felt . . . well, his arm felt amazing, but this whole routine was all too familiar. She thought she’d gotten past it, but instead she found herself checking around for the nearest bathroom or trash can.

“Are you going to be sick?” Oliver asked.

“Maybe,” she said, gritting her teeth.

"Can you wait until I’m not standing next to you?”

“I’ll be fine,” Felicity replied. “Just give me a minute.”

In a moment, the nausea passed. She’d have to get over this, or she wouldn’t be able to do her job. Felicity steered Oliver in the direction of the elevator, and shook her head at the patrol officer who was waiting there, jabbing at the “up” button like it would bring the elevator up to their floor sooner. He stepped aside, and when the door slid open, Felicity gave Oliver a little shove forward into the elevator. As she followed, he turned around and gave her a smirk.

Felicity jabbed a button. “It’s six floors down to the holding cells,” she said.

“I know.” He watched the numbers counting down, still smirking.

“And this is a slow elevator.”

“I know. As your partner so eloquently stated, I’ve made this trip a few times,” said Oliver.

“You’re going to make it as awkward as possible, aren’t you?” Felicity’s arms were crossed, and she was staring straight ahead, but he was making eye contact with her reflection in the shiny door. And genuinely smiling.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said. “I don’t feel awkward at all.”


	12. Truth Be Told

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Felicity goes to court.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a nice long chapter to keep you going between episodes. Thanks to all my new kudos-givers and reviewers and bookmarkers, and all the old ones too. And a shout-out to thatmasquedgirl for talking out the structure of this chapter with me.

Chapter 12—Truth Be Told

Felicity had been in court many times over the course of her three years with the Starling City Police Department. Arraignments were boring but usually quick, a chance for the defendant to hear the charges and enter a plea, and for the judge to set bail. But this was a murder case, and with his recently-back-from-the-dead status, Oliver Queen had double the star power.

The courtroom was crowded, but after a pointed glare from Detective Lance, a local reporter gave up his seat and went to stand in the back. There was just enough room for Felicity and Lance to squeeze into the first row behind the prosecution’s table. Kate Spencer, the district attorney herself, was taking the lead on what was sure to be a high-profile case.

Oliver sat alone at the defense table. His posture seemed indignant yet relaxed, and he was all dressed up for court in a dark suit. His family sat behind him in the first row, Mr. Steele, Mrs. Queen, and Thea. No Laurel Lance in sight, which Felicity thought was just as well.

The bailiff called court to order, and everyone rose as the judge swept in. Felicity liked her. She wasn’t a pushover, and she knew the law better than most of the attorneys who passed through her courtroom.

“Docket number 1941, People vs. Oliver Queen,” the bailiff read. “Murder, aggravated assault with intent, menacing, and trespassing.”

Felicity had always thought menacing was a weird charge. Basically it was the law’s equivalent of “he looked shifty.”

“Where’s your attorney, Mr. Queen?” asked the judge.

Oliver stood up and smoothed down his tie. “I’m representing myself, Judge.”

Felicity cringed at his informal address. Had he not even seen one episode of  _Law & Order_ ?

“I’m not sure that’s the wisest course, Mr. Queen,” the judge replied.

“ _I_ think it is,” said Oliver. “I’m innocent.”

The judge nodded. “Then we’ll consider that your plea.”

“Thank you.” Oliver sat down.

“Now as to bail—”

Kate Spencer rose to her feet. “Your Honor, Mr. Queen’s family owns a pair of private jets, and while on the subject of their wealth, I would point out that there is virtually no bail amount that could guarantee his presence at trial.”

Felicity heard some murmuring from the back of the courtroom. Detective Lance grumbled something under his breath as Laurel swept up the aisle.

“So then I guess it’s a good thing that the People’s case is so circumstantial.” She went over to stand next to Oliver. “Dinah Laurel Lance, Your Honor. I’d like to file my appearance on behalf of the defendant.” She opened a file on the table in front of her. “Mr. Queen’s wealth should not deprive him of the right to be released on bail under the presumption of innocence.”

“He is a flight risk,” said Spencer, sounding a little petulant.

“Then minimize the risk,” Laurel said to the D.A. She turned back to the judge. “The defendant is willing to submit to home confinement and electronic monitoring through the wearing of a UKG45 administered ankle device.”

Oliver half-rose from his seat, glaring at Laurel. “No, he wouldn’t.”

"Sold,” said the judge.

“Your Honor—” Spencer said.

“Bail is set at fifty million dollars, five million dollars bond,” the judge declared. “Defendant to see Probation for the fitting of a GPS device.” She banged her gavel.

Detective Lance leaned over and spoke in Felicity’s ear. “Got any friends in Probation?”

She shrugged. She’d just come out of Internal Affairs. She didn’t really have friends anywhere.

“I need the frequency for that device.”

“Oh, that’s easy. I can hack it for you,” Felicity whispered.

Lance’s eyebrows went up.

“I don’t mean ‘hack’ in the sense of breaking the law,” she said, backpedaling. “The frequency will be listed on the department’s servers. But I can set up a ha—a shortcut to piggyback on the original signal so it won’t look like anything untoward is happening. Not that it  _is_ untoward. Because it’s not, right?” She looked to him for help.

“It’s not untoward. It’s surveillance,” Lance said. “I want to know every move my suspect makes once he’s out of police custody.” He stood up. “You go back to your desk and find that frequency. I’m gonna go try to talk some sense into my daughter.”

What Felicity had proposed wasn’t illegal, strictly speaking, but it was definitely on the gray side of ethical. Dark gray. Charcoal, even. So she took an early lunch break. After a quick stop at a Mediterranean café, she went to the park across the street from the courthouse. She’d never made a bus there, and it was frequented by runners and dog walkers at all hours of the day, so it didn’t have a creepy vibe. Felicity settled on a bench with her tablet, but first things first. She ate her lamb shawermah and her crispy fries and then used a liberal amount of hand sanitizer to get the grease off her fingers.

Accessing the SCPD servers from her tablet was easy. She’d been doing it since she was twelve and had tried to find out about a rash of home invasions in her neighborhood. She’d even altered a couple of files in order to change the direction of the investigation, and an arrest was eventually made.

An ankle monitor had already been signed out, its registration number assigned to Oliver Queen. Felicity looked up the frequency, memorized it, and then covered her tracks. She wouldn’t be able to piggyback on the signal until the device was turned on. She slipped off her heels and shrugged out of her blazer. She didn’t like her court suit—the muted blue was kind of blah.

Felicity sat on her bench for a long time, thinking about what she’d seen that morning. The Oliver Queen in that courtroom and the one whose arrest she’d witnessed seemed so different from the guy who’d presented her with a shot-up laptop and smiled when she started rambling. This other Oliver seemed indignant and arrogant and pretty much everything she’d imagined him to be when she first saw his picture. It begged the question: which one was the real Oliver, and which one was the mask? How did the Hood factor in, if at all? Or were they all masks, and she had yet to see his true face?

Back at the police department, Lance was stomping around in a huff again. Obviously his talk with Laurel had not gone well. Felicity was beginning to be able to measure his stress level by his hair. The more agitated he was, the more he’d scrub at it. Right now his was as crazy as she’d ever seen it, so she resolved to steer clear of him. But when he saw her, he marched right up to her desk.

“Where are we at on the frequency?” he asked.

“I have it,” Felicity replied. “I was just waiting for them to turn it on so I could—” She glanced around to make sure no one else was listening. “So I could do the other thing,” she finished.

“You need to work on your poker face, Smoak,” Lance replied.

“Yes, I do.”

“Do your thing,” said Lance. “I want to know where he is at all times. He always was a slippery one. I have a meeting with the D.A.”

“Another one? Should I go with you?” Felicity asked.

“No, no need to draw her attention to you. It’d just make you a target. I can handle her. She just wants to chew me out a little more. You stay here and work on the thing.”

Felicity thought presenting a united front to the D.A. would have been the right thing to do, but if her partner wanted her to keep track of Oliver Queen and fly under the radar instead, then that’s what she’d do.

But electronically following someone under house arrest was actually really boring. Felicity set up an alert to notify her if Oliver left the property and then she got to work on other things.

Detective Lance had several meetings at the D.A.’s office over the next two days. He would come back fuming too much to speak coherently or he wouldn’t come back at all, so Felicity had no opportunity to find out anything from him. She had no idea what was going on until Kate Spencer herself strode through Major Crimes, glaring at Lance as she passed him.

“We have a meeting,” Lance mumbled to Felicity.

“Okay. I’ll just be here.”

“No, Smoak,  _we_ have a meeting,” said her partner. “You’ll be present at this one.”

Her eyes widened. “Um. Okay.”

“Relax. You don’t have to say anything. You were involved in Queen’s arrest, so you have to be there.” He straightened a stack of papers and set them aside. “Let’s go.”

Felicity followed Detective Lance to one of the interview rooms. It was the same one where the “interrogation” of Oliver Queen had taken place. The D.A. was already seated at the table, somehow looking as intimidating as if she had been towering over Felicity. Lance took a seat to one side and Felicity drew up a chair next to him, leaving open the two seats across from Spencer. Felicity had no idea what was going on, but she had to assume they were waiting for Oliver and Laurel.

Sure enough, Laurel entered the room, followed closely by Oliver. Felicity couldn’t help but think how  _wrong_ it all was, Laurel working on a case opposite her father, defending the ex who cheated on her with her sister. How had it even gotten this far?

“Thank you both for coming,” said Spencer as they were seated.

“Thank  _you_ ,” Oliver said. “It’s nice to get out of the house.”

Felicity could see Lance roll his eyes. So they were dealing with Smartass Oliver today.

Spencer closed the file in front of her and folded her hands on top of it. “I’ll cut right to it,” she began, looking directly at Laurel. “Detective Lance arrested your client without consulting my office first. So congratulations. I am willing to accept a plea in this case.”

Oliver arched an eyebrow. “Absolutely not.”

Kate Spencer glared at him but continued to speak to Laurel. “Mr. Queen spent five years in seclusion on a deserted island, cut off from civilization. It is quite possible he’s suffering from some form of post-traumatic stress. Given that, we would support a plea of insanity conditional on a period of indeterminate incarceration at a psychiatric facility.”

“No, thank you,” Oliver said, with that stupid playboy smile Felicity was really starting to dislike. “I’m not crazy.”

“Finally, something we agree on,” Lance interjected. “He’s not a nut—he’s a killing machine.”

“Actually, I’m neither,” said Oliver.

Lance leaned forward. “There is nothing you can say to me that I would believe.”

“I’ll take a polygraph,” Oliver replied, his posture mirroring Lance’s.

“Polygraphs are inadmissible,” Laurel said to him.

“In front of a jury,” Oliver corrected her. “I’ll take a polygraph in front of  _him_ .” He gave Lance a pointed look. “ _He’s_ the one I need to convince.”

Laurel looked at Spencer. “I’m gonna need a minute.”

Spencer, Lance, and Felicity rose from their seats and went out into the hall. Kate Spencer backed Detective Lance up to the wall and got right in his face.

“You better get yourself under control right now,” she said. “You have screwed up every aspect of this case because you can’t set aside your anger. And I get it,” she added, backing up. “I get it. He’s a spoiled brat who broke your daughter’s heart and got your other daughter killed. You have every reason to hate him. But I will not let your hate compromise this case. Got it?”

Lance nodded sharply. It was kind of amazing seeing the redheaded lawyer totally intimidate a man twice her size who had plenty of presence himself. Felicity was very, very glad she had not been included in the scolding.

Laurel came out of the interview room. “He’ll take the polygraph. If he fails it, he’ll consider the deal.”

The whole thing sounded stupid and risky to Felicity and, judging by the look on her face, Laurel felt the same way.

“Fine,” said Spencer. “But I’m not holding out the olive branch indefinitely.” She turned to Detective Lance. “Set up the poly for this afternoon.” She stalked off down the hall.

“You sure you want to do this?” Lance asked his daughter. “There’s nowhere to hide during a polygraph.”

“It’s a terrible idea, but he’s determined,” Laurel replied. “And if there’s a chance to shut this down before it goes to trial, then I’m going to take it.”

Detective Lance contacted a polygraph operator and set up an appointment for later that afternoon. “I want you there for this,” he said to Felicity. “I kept you out of the meetings with Spencer in case there were consequences. I’m the one who should face those consequences, not you. But you should be involved in everything else, and I want you in there observing like you did during the interrogation.”

Felicity busied herself at her desk as Lance gathered files and scribbled notes. They took a brief, awkwardly silent late lunch break together at the deli across the street. Later, the polygraph technician set up the machine in the interview room. For all of technology’s advances in the last thirty years or so, polygraph machines had pretty much stayed the same.

Laurel and Oliver came in, arguing.

“It’s ridiculous, Ollie,” said Laurel. “It’s frivolous when you are looking at life in prison, not to mention in incredibly poor taste.”

“Of course it’s ridiculous. This entire thing is ridiculous. That’s the point.”

“God, it’s been five years but it feels just like old times,” Laurel snapped. “And I don’t mean that in a good way.” She turned away from him and approached the table. Oliver smirked at her back.

“Have a seat, Mr. Queen,” Detective Lance said. “Eric here will get you set up.”

Eric, the polygraph tech, waited for Oliver to sit before attaching the blood pressure cuff and sensors that would measure his pulse and respiration, among other things. Felicity had originally agreed with Laurel that this was a bad move for Oliver, but now she was starting to wonder if maybe this one test could tear down the prosecution’s shaky case. Eric nodded to Detective Lance that he was ready, and Felicity tried to focus her gaze on a spot just to the left of Oliver’s head.

“Is your name Oliver Queen?” Detective Lance asked.

“You don’t know who I am, Detective?” Oliver was back in full smartass mode.

“The questions are to calibrate the polygraph,” said Lance. “Is your name Oliver Queen?”

“Yes.” Oliver appeared to relax a little bit.

“Were you born in Starling City May 16 th, 1985?”

“Yes.”

He was six years older than Felicity. Not that she cared, or that it was important or anything. Not at all.

“Is your hair blue?”

Oliver rolled his eyes. “No.”

“Ever been to Iron Heights prison?” Lance asked. All of his questions sounded like statements.

“No.”

Laurel’s eyes widened in surprise, not at the question, Felicity was sure, but at the answer.

Lance held up the police sketch of the Hood. “Are you the man in this picture?”

“No,” said Oliver.

The detective glanced at Eric, who nodded. Lance sucked at his teeth and blew out a breath. “You steal forty million dollars off Adam Hunt?”

“No, I didn’t,” Oliver replied.

“Were you marooned on an island called Lian Yu for five years?”

“Yes.”

Laurel frowned. “How is that even relevant?” Felicity was wondering the same thing.

“I don’t need to show relevance,” Lance said, “but since you asked, whatever happened on that island turned him into a cold-blooded killer.”

Oliver flinched.

“The physician that examined you reported that twenty percent of your body is covered in scar tissue,” said Lance.

“The machine won’t work unless you ask a question,” Laurel said to her father, but she was looking at Oliver, and she’d gone pale. Felicity guessed she hadn’t known about the scars.

“Did that happen to you there?” Detective Lance asked.

“Yes,” said Oliver. The cocky posture was gone.

“When you came back, you told everyone that you were alone on that island. Are you claiming that your scars were self-inflicted?”

Felicity drew in a sharp breath.

“No,” Oliver answered. “I wasn’t alone. I didn’t want to talk about what happened to me on the island.”

“Why not?” asked Lance.

“Because the people that were there tortured me.”

Laurel’s eyes were wet. She stared at her father. Felicity was sure she was trying to get him to stop, but he wasn’t finished.

“Have you killed anyone?” he asked Oliver.

Oliver swallowed, collecting himself, but Felicity could see his lower lip quiver a bit, and that was when her own eyes filled with tears.

“Yes,” said Oliver. He looked at Detective Lance. “When I asked your daughter, Sara, to come on my father’s yacht with me. I killed your daughter.” He stripped off the sensors, ripped away the Velcro cuffs, and left.

Eric looked at the machine’s readout. “I’d have to study the date, but just eyeballing it, he’s telling the truth.”

Lance made a skeptical  _mmhmm_ noise.

Laurel stood up and somehow blinked away the tears that she hadn’t let fall. “Can I assume that you’ll be recommending Ms. Spencer to drop all charges against my client?”

“No,” Lance said. “I know a guilty man when I see one. He is guilty, whether you can see it or not.”


	13. Party Like It's 99 to Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Felicity has a self-guided tour of the Queen mansion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, another chunky chapter. "Damaged" is a cop-heavy episode, so there was a lot to cover. This chapter will bring that episode to a close. And then I will be taking a bit of a break. Not a super-long one. Probably two weeks or so before the next update. Thanks to all my new followers/reviewers!

** Chapter 13—Party Like It’s 99 to Life **

Felicity followed Detective Lance down the hall at a safe distance. In the squad room, he brushed past Hilton, putting off the other detective with a shake of his head. Hilton approached Felicity instead, and they both turned to watch Lance cross the room in a few long strides and then exit out the other door.

“Where do you think he’s headed?” Felicity asked.

“Not a bar, if that’s what you’re thinking,” said Hilton. “As bad as things got, he never drank on duty.”

“That wasn’t what I was thinking, but, um . . . good?”

Hilton smiled.

“I just wonder how much danger I’d be putting myself in if I went after him,” she continued.

“It’s better to leave him alone for now,” Hilton said. “He’ll fume for a while, do some brooding, and then come up with a plan.”

“Great.” Felicity sank onto her desk chair. “A plan to continue pursuing a suspect in a case that’s already on shaky ground, a suspect who just passed a polygraph.”

Hilton shrugged. “Quentin has good instincts. Great, even. He hates Oliver Queen and has every right to, but I believe those instincts. It’s not just hate driving him—there’s something else there.”

“Then why aren’t  _you_ his partner?” Felicity asked.

Detective Hilton grinned. “I was, for a while. But we’re too much alike, not to mention that I got fed up with dragging his drunk ass out of bars in the middle of the night. I needed a break, and Quentin needed someone to ground him, you know? To be the Scully to his Mulder.”

That made her smile.

Felicity filed a report on the polygraph session, and then she got out her tablet and watched Oliver Queen move around his house for a while. He spent a long time out by the pool, the edge of the house arrest boundary. Was he testing the limits or just chilling in a deck chair?

After about twenty minutes of watching the little green dot move around on her screen, it dawned on her that, while the legality of her actions might be up for debate, there was no doubt that what she was doing was creepy. She shut off her tablet and tried to look busy while she waited on Detective Lance.

Her attention turned to her work computer, she opened the browser to check Google’s latest hits on Oliver’s name. His arrest for murder was a huge headline, but it was a smaller item that caught her eye. It was less than an hour old, a tiny mention on a local celebrity gossip blog that “billionaire heir and erstwhile murder suspect Oliver Queen” was throwing a huge party at his house that evening, a prison-themed party.

The party must have been what Oliver and Laurel had been talking about as they’d entered the room for the polygraph. Felicity had to agree with Laurel on that one. A big party was crazy and ridiculous and wouldn’t do him any favors with his upcoming trial. It would make him look as if he wasn’t taking it all seriously.

Detective Lance finally returned from wherever he’d gone to seethe. He seemed energized, like he’d channeled his anger.

“Take off early, Smoak,” he said to her. “We have a party to go to tonight. I’ll pick you up at nine.”

“Wait, what?” Felicity rose from her seat. “Are you talking about the prison party at the Queen mansion?”

“That’s the one. It’s our last best chance of getting something definitive on Queen.”

She frowned. “By crashing his party?”

“It’s his home turf. He’ll be comfortable there, relaxed,” said Lance. “And then we’ll catch him with his guard down.”

Felicity had no idea what to wear to a billionaire’s house party. She wasn’t going as a guest, thank God. She didn’t have the kind of shiny, slinky dresses she’d seen in tabloid photos. Her work wardrobe was standard fare—button-downs, sweaters, cardigans. And the rest of her clothes were . . .well, they were cute. Striped leggings, Doctor Who shirts, moose pajama pants. Her favorite top, almost threadbare now, had a picture of a Twinkie on it, the white writing proclaiming, “It’s what’s on the inside that counts.” That was definitely not the kind of attire that would allow her to blend in.

Eventually she decided to stay in her work clothes. With her badge and handcuffs on prominent display, it might look like a costume for the prison theme. Hopefully that would give her enough anonymity to move around freely.

Detective Lance rang her doorbell at nine sharp. She opened the door and Jpeg immediately twined around Lance’s legs, purring. Her partner frowned at the cat. Felicity scooped up Jpeg, deposited him in the entryway, and shut and locked the door behind her.

The Queen mansion was intimidating enough by day, but at night, packed inside and out with partygoers, it had a whole different vibe. This was the kind of party she’d never been invited to. Smart girls who looked like Skipper dolls and dressed like nine-year-olds did not get to sit with the cool kids.

As they walked up the long driveway, Lance went over the game plan. “We’ll have to split up,” he said. “You go in the house—you’re young enough to blend in better. I’ll head out to the pool deck where I can get lost in the crowd. If you see or hear anything, text me.”

Felicity didn’t ask him what she should be looking for, or what he expected to find in the crush of people around the stage by the pool. She kind of figured their presence was supposed to be less practical and more about showing Oliver Queen that he wasn’t in the clear just because he’d passed a polygraph.

She wished their positions had been reversed. Outside, she could have been just another face in the crowd. But there were far fewer people in the house, and most of them appeared to be staff. She clutched her purse, with her gun in its zippered compartment, closer to her side and wandered through the house, trying to look casual. Then she heard a voice coming from somewhere down the hallway ahead of her.

“It’s sweet of you to be so inclusive, man. Really, it’s adorable. But there’s a difference between inviting cops to your party and stepping across the boundary to set off a SWAT team invasion. I hope I don’t have to tell you which one would look worse.”

“Tommy, I’m not going to—”

Oliver Queen strode out of a room off the hallway and crashed right into Felicity. He caught her before she landed on the floor.

“Felicity? What are you doing here?” he asked.

His hand lingered on her waist, and she took a step back, moving out of his reach. “Crashing your party to overhear some shady dealings or maybe stumble across a murder weapon,” she blurted out.

Oliver frowned in confusion, and the guy behind him was gaping at her.

“Oh my God, I’m going to lose my job if I can’t keep my mouth shut,” Felicity said. “I didn’t mean all that. I just meant . . . it was Detective Lance’s idea to—”

Oliver held up a hand. He was wearing a blue work shirt with a prison number on it. “He’s here to intimidate me. I get it.”

“You two know each other?” said the other guy.

Oliver made introductions, but Felicity had already recognized his best friend Tommy Merlyn. In ever paparazzi photo she’d seen, Tommy was always right next to Oliver, egging him on.

Tommy’s dark eyebrows arched when Oliver introduced her as Detective Smoak. He flashed a blinding smile as he shook her hand, but his eyes were troubled.

“I should go greet my guests,” Oliver said. “Enjoy the party, Felicity.”

They moved past her down the hall, and she could hear them speaking before they were out of earshot.

“Did you actually invite cops?” Tommy asked.

“No,” said Oliver. “She’s Detective Lance’s new partner. I’m sure he’s skulking around somewhere.”

“I’ll admit she’s hot in a sexy librarian kind of way, but maybe nailing a chick who’s investigating you for murder isn’t in your best interests.”

Felicity couldn’t hear Oliver’s response as they went around a corner and out of sight.

“Jerk,” she muttered. She would make Tommy Merlyn eat those words if she ever got a chance.

Eventually, she wandered out onto a balcony overlooking the pool area. It was more crowded than she’d imagined. The press of people surrounding the DJ parted and Oliver jumped onto the stage.

“Hi, everybody!” he shouted, arms flung wide. “I’m very pleased that you came to celebrate before I am sent up the river!”

Felicity stared. His voice was different—higher-pitched, maybe, younger. And the wide grin on his face was nothing like the smile she’d seen when he recognized her just a few minutes before. It was as if he’d shrugged off one personality and donned another on his way outside.

“The closest neighbors are six miles away, so don’t worry about the noise,” Oliver continued. “Actually, on second thought, let’s wake those losers up!”

A responding roar went up from the partygoers and Oliver hopped off the stage, disappearing into the crowd.

She’d seen enough. Felicity went back inside. At a loss for what to do next, she wandered through the massive house and managed to get thoroughly lost. She found herself in a section—a wing?—that seemed less formally decorated and more lived in. She had been walking aimlessly for ten minutes, hoping she’d run into someone from the house staff who could point her in the right direction.

Voices came from behind an open door. Felicity approached it, planning to appeal to whoever was inside, but stopped short when she recognized Laurel Lance’s voice.

“What happened to you on that island was far more than you deserved,” she said, sounding choked up. “And I was wrong that I didn’t ask you before, but I’m asking you now. I need to know. I need to see.”

Felicity heard a murmured response but couldn’t make out Oliver’s words. She wasn’t exactly sure what Laurel was talking about, but it seemed like the kind of conversation Detective Lance would be interested in. Plus, she just wanted to hear. So she peeked into the room.

Oliver was turned slightly away from the door, and Laurel was totally focused on her task, which seemed to be ogling—and maybe caressing—Oliver’s bare chest through his open shirt. Her eyes were filled with tears.

“How did you survive this?” she asked.

“There were times when I wanted to die,” Oliver said. His voice sounded normal again. Lower, quiet. “In the end, there was something I wanted more.”

Felicity took a step backward, thinking that the conversation had nothing to do with the murder charges, when suddenly the space between them no longer existed. They were kissing, and while it had happened so fast that she didn’t see who made the first move, it was pretty clear that this was not an attorney-client kiss. It was a searing, stomach-flipping, I’ve-been-dreaming-about-this-for-five-years kiss.

Right as Laurel began to pull back, it occurred to Felicity that she was being a total creeper. She backed out of the doorway and hurried down the hall, slipping behind a pillar.

Laurel rushed out of the room, tears falling as she swiped a hand across her mouth. Felicity followed at a distance, figuring Laurel would know the fastest way downstairs. But her phone buzzed loudly, and she had to duck into the nearest room, a half bathroom that in a fancy house like this was probably called a powder room.

It was a text from Detective Lance, asking her how it was going. She typed out a response that she was in a bathroom somewhere on the third floor and she was totally lost. Lance told her to stay put, that he would come get her. She could almost hear him rolling his eyes.

Felicity sat on a padded bench in the powder room, facing the open door so Lance could find her. Her phone buzzed again. This time it was an alert from the program she’d set up to track Oliver’s ankle monitor. Somehow the device had been broken. She quickly speed-dialed her partner, drumming her fingers on the cushion as she waited for him to pick up.

“What’s going—”

She cut him off. “The ankle monitor’s been broken. You need to get up here now before the entire department swoops down on this place.”

“What was the last location before it stopped transmitting?” Lance asked.

She checked the program. “This floor,” she said. “Uh, third door on the left when you come up the main stairs.”

Felicity got up and peeked out into the hall. Lance was creeping toward her, gun drawn. He motioned for her to stay where she was. He disappeared into one of the rooms. As she reached into her purse, she heard the loud crack of two gunshots.

When Felicity entered the room at a run, the sharp smell of cordite still hung in the air. The bedroom was a mess. Broken glass and pottery littered the floor. Lamps were overturned, and she recognized the remains of at least two chairs. Lance stood just inside and to the right of the doorway, gun still raised. A man in a waiter’s uniform lay on the floor amid the debris. Felicity stepped over him and kicked a gun with a silencer on it out of his reach.

Oliver was nearby, red-faced and coughing. He struggled to sit up. Lance took a step forward and extended his hand. Oliver took it, and the detective pulled him to his feet.

“The cavalry’s on its way,” said Lance. “Why don’t we exit the crime scene and you can get rid of your party guests, Mr. Queen?”

“Uh, yeah,” Oliver said, rubbing his throat.

The SWAT team that showed up minutes later was helpful in dispersing the party crowd. Lance spoke in low tones with the SWAT commander and then had Felicity herd the Queen family into the living room where Oliver had originally been arrested. Oliver sat on a plump beige sofa. Thea had procured an ice pack and was holding it to Oliver’s injured hand.

“How did you know I was in trouble?” Oliver asked Detective Lance.

He ran a hand through his already crazy hair. “Because when the guy was fighting you, he broke the ankle monitor. Detective Smoak here directed me to your exact whereabouts.”

Oliver nodded at Felicity. She smiled back. A smile was okay, right? She glanced at Lance, who was frowning. No more smiles, then.

Moira Queen rushed into the room, followed by Walter Steele. “Are you all right?” she asked her son.

“I’m fine,” said Oliver.

“Oliver,” she said, a warning in her voice.

Oliver smiled a little. “Mom, I promise.”

Moira turned on Detective Lance. “This is on you,” she spat. “Accusing my son publicly, you’ve made him a target.”

Walter put his hand on her arm. “Do you have any idea who attacked Oliver?” he asked Lance.

“We haven’t identified him yet,” said the detective. “There must be someone with a grudge against the Hood, obviously.” He crouched before Oliver and unsnapped the ankle device.

“What are you doing?” asked Oliver.

“I just got a call from my lieutenant,” he replied. “An arms dealer was attacked across town tonight. By the vigilante. Multiple witnesses put him there.” He turned to Moira. “In light of that, all charges against your son are being dropped.”

Moira twitched, and Walter squeezed her arm. “I’m truly sorry for what’s happened to your family, Quentin,” she said. “But would you kindly get the hell out of my house?”

Detective Lance glanced at Felicity in a silent command to follow. They turned to leave.

“Mr. Lance?” Oliver called.

The detective turned to face him.

“Thank you,” said Oliver.

Lance did what Felicity had always called “the bro head nod,” a quick, sharp incline of the head, then left the mansion, his young partner following in his wake. He said nothing as they trekked back down the long driveway to the spot Lance had parked his car. Hilton and his new partner had caught the case investigating the man who’d tried to shoot Oliver, and since Lance was the one who shot him, they couldn’t be involved.

For once, Felicity kept her mouth shut. There were too many thoughts rushing through her head to separate out into speech anyway. They’d be getting a fresh start on the vigilante case first thing in the morning, beginning with the new attack that Lance had mentioned to the Queens.

“What are you going to do now?” Felicity asked as Lance pulled up in front of her apartment building.

“Go home,” he said. “Get some sleep. Figure out how I could have read that kid so totally wrong. I mean, mostly wrong. He’s not the vigilante, but he’s still bad news.”

Felicity felt relieved when she entered her apartment, relieved that Oliver had been exonerated. She kind of liked him. The side of him she thought was real, anyway, not the jerk who’d throw a prison party and yell at his guests to wake up the neighbors.

About two hours later, her phone woke her up.

“Smoak.”

“Detective Lance?” Felicity asked. She fumbled around on the night stand for her glasses and put them on.

“Smoak,” he repeated. “Drive me home, Smoak?”

“Are you drunk?” she asked.

“Most definitely.”

“Where are you?”

He named a bar she didn’t recognize. She had to look it up online before throwing on a jacket over her pj’s and shoving her feet into a pair of flip-flops.

The bar, which wasn’t all that far from her apartment, was mostly empty except for the bartender rolling his eyes as he washed glasses, Lance, who was swaying on his bar stool, and Laurel.

“Come on, Dad. Let’s get you home,” she said.

Lance threw his arm around her neck, then caught sight of Felicity.

“Smoak!” he hollered into Laurel’s ear. She winced. “I thought it was getting Smoaky in here.”

Laurel gave Felicity a death glare, daring her to try to help. She got her arm around her father’s waist and helped him to his feet.

“Thanks for calling me, Mike,” she said to the bartender.

“You know,” Lance whispered loudly in Laurel’s ear, “they say where there’s Smoak, there’s fire.”

He stumbled toward the door, leaning heavily on his daughter. Laurel gave Felicity another look as they passed her, as if somehow Felicity had been complicit in Detective Lance’s getting totally smashed. The tension did not go unnoticed by Lance. He giggled drunkenly and then stage-whispered to Laurel, “Hey. Hey. Smoak gets in your eyes."


	14. A Full House With the Royal Flush

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Felicity gets red on her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This update was a LONG time coming. Thank you for being patient with me as I dealt with all the things that took priority over this story. I promise the next update will be much quicker. This chapter covers the events from the first part of 1x6, "Legacies."

Chapter 14—A Full House With the Royal Flush

Detective Lance took a week’s vacation, to pull himself together after his brief relapse, Felicity supposed. She spent that time partnered with Hilton, finishing the paperwork involved in Lance’s shooting of the would-be assassin. Toward the end of the week, they were out to lunch when a call came in over the radio.

“Ten-sixty-five, Starling Trust Bank. All units respond.”

An armed robbery in progress. A bank robbery. Hilton tossed some cash on the table and stood up. Felicity glanced down at her half-eaten BLT.

“Come on, Smoak,” Hilton urged. “No time for a to-go box.”

She grabbed her purse and followed him out the door. He drove like a crazy person, weaving in and out of traffic, while she fastened her seat belt one-handed and radioed in their location and ETA. Someone called in a report of shots fired, which started a burst of chatter over the radio.

Three marked units had beaten them to the scene. Hilton skidded to a stop behind the nearest one. Crouched behind the cover of his open door, he spoke to the closest officer. Then he ducked his head back inside the car.

“Three of them, all armed and wearing masks,” Hilton said. “They’re still inside.”

“Crap.” Felicity pulled her gun out of her purse and checked the safety. They were too far back for an effective shot, but it was wise to be prepared in case the perimeter was breached. She opened her door and stood behind it. She was short enough that she didn’t have to bend down at all, and had to reach up a little to rest her hands with her gun on the top edge of the door.

The front doors of the bank were closed, and the entire street was eerily silent during what should have been a busy lunch rush. Felicity suppressed a shudder and narrowed her focus to the front of the bank. Detective Hilton grabbed a bullhorn from somewhere and shouted into it.

“Starling City Police Department! Lay down your weapons and come out with your hands up! Repeat: lay down your weapons and come out with your hands up!”

Silence. No movement.

Then the bank’s doors opened. Felicity tensed, her grip tightening on her gun. A blonde woman in a green blouse hurtled down the steps of the bank. She was wearing a white mask with a playing card queen on it.

“Hold your fire,” said Hilton as the rest of the hostages burst out of the bank, all wearing similar masks. “Hold your fire!”

It was impossible to know if any of the robbers were among the hostages, not when they all wore masks.

“They’re all hostages. Mills, contain the hostages!” Hilton shouted to one of the other officers. “All units, move in, move in!”

Felicity stepped out from behind the protection of her door, shaking off a hostage who tried to grab her arm as she moved past, following Detective Hilton.

Uniformed officers streamed into the bank and spread out to clear the building. Felicity stuck close to Hilton, but her gaze roved across the bank lobby, stopping at the body on the floor.  _The body on the floor_ .

This is what she’d wanted, to be out of Cybercrimes, out of Internal Affairs, working cases that did not make her feel the need to shower afterwards. Of course she knew that a move to Major Crimes would come with its share of homicides, but she wondered if she’d ever get used to it. She wondered if she should.

“Smoak.” Hilton snapped his fingers at her and pointed to the body. She gaped at him for a moment before she realized what he wanted.

Felicity stepped around him and approached the body. The glint of gold caught her eye—a bloody police shield on the floor, inches from the man’s head. There was a messy exit wound on the right side of his chest. He’d been shot in the back. She tried not to look too closely as she reached down to check for a pulse that surely wouldn’t be there.

Felicity was examining his features, trying to determine if she’d ever seen him around the department, when she felt a flutter beneath her fingertips.

“He’s alive,” she whispered. The man’s eyelids twitched. “He’s still alive!” she shouted. “We need an ambulance!”

Once the call was made, Felicity wasn’t sure what to do. She clicked the safety on her gun and shoved it in the pocket of her jacket. Then she used her bare hands to put pressure on the exit wound to stop the bleeding. She recognized the man now. Stan Washington. He worked in Vice, and he was married, with kids. She pressed down harder.

Everything happening around Felicity was a blur. Her world had narrowed down to her and Stan. A hand on her shoulder startled her, but she shrugged it off, focusing on maintaining pressure on the gunshot wound.

“Detective.”

Stan twitched again, and Felicity breathed a sigh of relief. With her hands occupied, she hadn’t been able to check his pulse again.

“Detective.” The hand on her shoulder again. Someone’s shadow stretched across her field of vision.

Felicity glanced up. Two EMTs were setting up a portable EKG on the floor next to Stan. A third knelt in front of her, a freckle-faced boy with muddy green eyes who didn’t look old enough to drive.

“You did good, Detective,” he said. “I’ll take over from here.”

She nodded, but her hands wouldn’t move. So he did it for her, enclosing her bloody fingers in his gloved hands.

“You did good,” he said again.

Felicity got to her feet and picked up Stan’s police shield. Her hands shook as she dropped it into her pocket with her gun. She looked around. The bank lobby was swarming with cops, uniforms, detectives, and crime scene techs, but she didn’t see Hilton among them. She snagged a beat cop she recognized from a Cybercrimes case and asked him where Hilton was. He directed her to the bank’s vault.

The vault was much quieter than the lobby. Two techs conversed quietly off to one side, pointing at the big hole in the floor. Hilton paced back and forth dangerously close to the hole, barking orders into his radio. When Felicity stepped into the vault, he came over to her.

“How is he?” the detective asked.

“Still alive,” Felicity said. “I think they missed his heart.”

“Good. And you?”

“Fine.”

“Bullshit,” said Hilton. “You look like hell. Go home—”

“I’m  _fine_ ,” Felicity said. “Don’t take me off the case just because—”

“You didn’t let me finish, Smoak. Go home and get cleaned up,” he said. “You can’t deal with witnesses while you’re covered in blood.”

Her stomach rolled. She knew she shouldn’t look down too closely, but her eyes were drawn to herself anyway. There was a lot of blood. She had knelt in a small pool of it, and it stained the knees of her pants. Her blue shirt was spattered and smeared, and her hands were red up past her wrists.

“Get cleaned up and then go back to the station,” said Hilton. “I want you compiling everything as it comes in. Start digging so we can find out who these guys are.”

“I already know,” Felicity replied. Her voice sounded dull to her own ears, flat and tired. “I mean, I don’t  _know_ -know. Like I don’t know their names. But I’m sure it’s the Royal Flush Gang.”

“Haven’t they been in the news?”

Felicity nodded. “They’ve been working their way toward the west coast. They’ll hit two or three banks in a city and then move on.”

“Find out who they are,” Hilton said. “Then maybe we can figure out their next target.”

Felicity caught a ride back to the station in a patrol car. If she went home, she wouldn’t want to leave, so she decided to skip it entirely. In the ladies room, she scrubbed her hands clean of Stan’s blood. She changed into black sweats and a gray t-shirt that were normally issued to trainees—they had “SCPD” emblazoned on them in large white letters—and turned her bloody clothes over to the crime lab, along with Stan’s shield. Her new ensemble looked ridiculous with her black Mary Janes, so she kicked off her shoes and stayed behind her desk.

She monitored the various databases, pulling each report off the servers as it came in. Once she’d complied everything that would be coming in for the night, she called the county hospital to check on Stan Washington’s condition. But he’d been transferred, she was told, to Starling General. That was good—all the superstar doctors were at Starling General—but Felicity knew the limits of the city health insurance plan, and she doubted it covered the move.

“Transferred on whose authority?” she asked the receptionist.

“Oliver Queen’s,” the woman replied. “Apparently he’s footing the bill too.”

A quick call to Starling General confirmed that Stan had arrived and was in the Critical Care Unit. His condition was serious but stable, and Mrs. Washington was telling anyone and everyone about the generosity of young Mr. Queen, and how he’d shown up in person, bodyguard in tow, to oversee the transfer.

Felicity hesitated a moment before making the next call. She wasn’t above pulling the cop card when she needed it, but was using her law enforcement status to satisfy her curiosity justified? Then she remembered Oliver Queen’s bullet-ridden laptop. She’d crossed an ethical line for him—he owed her one.

The next call connected her with Stan Washington’s hospital room. His wife answered the phone.

“I’m sorry to call so late, Mrs. Washington,” Felicity said. “I’m Officer Smoak, and I’m just wrapping up some paperwork regarding the shooting.” She crossed her fingers, insurance against karmic reprisals.

Mrs. Washington was effusive. It wasn’t hard to get her started talking about everything that had transpired, and Felicity easily steered the conversation toward Oliver Queen’s involvement.

“I was so surprised,” said Mrs. Washington. “After all the trouble he had with the law before he disappeared, and his wrongful arrest last week, I would have thought he hated cops. But then Mr. Diggle showed up at County and explained everything to the doctors there, and when the ambulance pulled in at Starling General, the man himself came roaring up on his motorcycle.”

Mr. Diggle. The enigmatic bodyguard.

“So this Mr. Diggle was there  _before_ Oliver Queen arrived?” she asked.

“That’s right,” Mrs. Washington said. “He was so nice, telling me Mr. Queen would be taking care of all the medical expenses, and Mr. Queen was just . . . gracious. Not at all what I expected.”

If Felicity knew one thing, it was that Oliver definitely defied expectations.

“It’s funny,” the other woman continued, “but when they walked away, it looked like they had a little argument. I can’t imagine what it was about.”

After saying goodbye, Felicity hung up the phone and stared at it for a few moments. If the bodyguard showed up first and made all the arrangements, and then he and Oliver had argued . . . maybe the magnanimous gesture had not been all Oliver’s idea.

“Go home, Smoak.”

She glanced up. Hilton loomed over her desk.

“I’m not finished going through the evidence,” she said.

“Your hands are shaking.”

She’d noticed. She felt cold too, and nauseous.

“And don’t tell me it’s caffeine, because your coffee mug is dry,” said Hilton. “Go home and get some sleep. You’ll come at it with fresh eyes tomorrow.”

She noticed he didn’t say “we.” Presumably  _he_ wouldn’t be leaving any time soon. She wanted to argue, but he was right. She wasn’t at her best, and it would be easy for her, in her shaken-up state, to overlook something. Reluctantly, she agreed to go home.

Hilton escorted Felicity to the door, where she remembered that she’d left her purse locked in her desk. She retraced her steps to the squad room while Detective Hilton buttonholed a patrol officer and berated him for some report that was late.

The squad room was dark, she and Hilton having been the last to leave, except for the blue glow from a single monitor nearest to the window that had definitely been shut minutes before. A puff of a cool breeze lifted the strands of hair around her face that had come loose from her ponytail. The monitor gave off just enough light for Felicity to see a tall hooded figure looming over the desk.

She hadn’t been quiet in her approach, and he immediately looked up. He moved incredibly fast, snapping a flash drive from the computer before vaulting over the desk and leaping out the window. She’d only caught a glimpse under the hood, a sharply defined jaw line and a pair of cool eyes—blue, maybe—that held her gaze for a microsecond before he was gone.

Felicity hurried over to the computer. A few clicks of the mouse brought up a list of the last few commands executed.

“Oh, crap,” she said, staring at the screen. Starling City’s very own hooded vigilante had just broken into the police department, downloaded everything they had on the bank robbery and shooting, then locked eyes with her before disappearing into the night. She ran over to the window, but he was long gone.


	15. To Die, To Sleep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Felicity's suspicions grow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a longer chapter because "Legacies" just needed to be wrapped up already. Thanks for being patient with me as I hammered this out! Anyone who catches the slightly obscure Buffy reference gets a virtual cookie and my undying appreciation.

**Chapter 15--To Die, To Sleep**

 

Felicity she shook her head and closed the window. She’d keep the encounter to herself for now. No one would believe her if she told, and there were no security cameras in the squad room to prove anything.

After retrieving her purse from her desk, she lingered in front of the board, looking at the police sketch of the hooded figure. Felicity wasn’t an artist, but her fingers itched to erase and redraw his jaw line.

It was incredibly late when she got home, but Felicity wasn’t the least bit sleepy now. Accessing the police department servers from home was fairly easy. She’d put a backdoor into the system just in case someone smarter than her came along and fixed the vulnerability. But that was unlikely. There just weren’t that many people smarter than her.

“ _Damn_ .”

Jpeg jumped down from her lap and fled to the kitchen.

Felicity stared at her tablet. According to the activity log for the computer the vigilante had used, he had downloaded everything Starling City P.D. had on the bank robbery.  _Everything_ .

“Witness statements, pictures, evidence reports . . . Why does the vigilante care about a bank robbery?”

With no idea of what she was looking for, Felicity started with the photos. Crime scene techs had taken hundreds of digital snapshots, of the exterior of the bank, the lobby, the vault, and the giant jack-hammered hole in the floor. She examined photo after photo, wondering what the vigilante’s interest could possibly be. The first priority of the police investigation would be to identify the perpetrators. Yes, it was the Royal Flush Gang, but no one knew exactly who they were. Maybe the vigilante wanted to know that information as much as the cops did.

With that in mind, Felicity went to the next photo, of the bank security guard. He’d been knocked out by one of the robbers. The photo after was a close-up of the guard’s face, showing a new bruise forming high on his right cheek. The mark looked like it had been made by a ring. A big, clunky one. Maybe a class ring. Felicity zoomed in on the bruise and sharpened the image. A few Google search results later and she had an answer: the ring that made that bruise came from Larchmont High School, right there in Starling City.

She didn’t have time to find out any more. She needed to get ready for work, but she was confident that she could find the ring’s owner once she got to her desk. Except she never actually got to her desk. Felicity spent the morning tracking down and interviewing witnesses with Detective Hilton. She only had a few minutes to speak with Lance, and it was really just checking in. She couldn’t tell him about the progress she’d made because then she’d have to explain how she’d accessed police files from home.

Then, in broad daylight, there was a second robbery.

“First Bank of Starling,” said Hilton after the call came in on the radio. “That’s two blocks from here.”

They were first on the scene, and everything happened so fast. Felicity found herself in the basement beneath the bank, crouched next Lance behind a big metal pipe with her gun drawn. Detective Hilton was across from them, hiding behind a low cinder block wall with two patrol officers and a small tactical team.

“What are you doing here?” she whispered to Detective Lance.

“Fighting crime,” he said. “All hands on deck.”

“Are you—” She bit her lip, needing to know but still unsure where the boundaries were between them.

“Am I sober?” Lance asked. “Haven’t had a drop since. Haven’t even looked at a bottle.” He checked the safety on his gun, though she’d already seen him check it twice. “I shouldn’t have called you that night.”

“It’s fine,” Felicity said, turning to look him in the eye. “We’re partners. You can always call me if you need a ride, or anything.”

“If you two are done catching up, we have a bank robbery to stop,” Detective Hilton whisper-yelled.

As if on cue, a figure popped up from the darkness in the corridor beyond. The mask he wore was a playing card ace. Even in the shadows, Felicity could see him heft a rifle to his shoulder.

She couldn’t tell who fired first. It didn’t really matter. Someone shouted “Gun!” and shots rang out from all sides. The noise was deafening and disorienting, so she hung back as the tactical team moved out of cover and closed in on the masked shooter. He was joined by two others, one of them carrying a heavy duffel bag. The money from the bank, Felicity assumed. The guy dropped the bag at his feet and began firing his own weapon.

The robbers backed up, looking for cover. Did they realize they were backing away from the money as well? The leaner shooter made a move toward the bag, but the  _twang_ of a bowstring and the  _whish_ of an arrow in flight reached Felicity’s ears over the gunfire. She flinched as the vigilante dropped from the ceiling almost directly above her. He caught her eye and winked— _winked_ —then turned and shot another arrow.

His target was the duffel bag. Whatever weird kind of arrows he used had pinned it to the floor. The bank robbers fled into the dark corridor, keeping the cops pinned down with gunfire until they were out of range.

The vigilante jumped over the cinder block wall, pushed off with his legs against the big pipe Felicity had been hiding behind, and disappeared in the direction he’d come—up.

“I’ve had my cheap thrill for today. How about you?”

Felicity turned. Detective Lance was looking where she’d been staring, at the ceiling above their heads.

“Is that the way he went?” Lance asked.

She nodded. “Do you have a flashlight?”

Lance procured one from a tactical officer, an enormous MagLite that could double as a billy club. He flicked the switch and aimed the beam upward. The light revealed a deserted catwalk underneath a maze of pipes dripping with condensation.

“Guy moves like a ninja,” Lance muttered. He turned to Felicity. “You making any headway finding out who this gang is?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “I have an idea of somewhere to look, but it’s just a hunch, and I have a feeling we’re going to be busy with paperwork for all of this.” She waved her hands around, indicating the scene around them, littered with shell casings and reeking of cordite.

“Keep me posted.”

Felicity was right. The robbery investigation took precedence, and then paperwork for the shoot-out was ridiculous. Felicity had written her statement, typed it, and stated it out loud for the record with Detective Lance, Detective Hilton, and Ben Holmes from Internal Affairs. Ben was a new hire since she’d left I.A. She liked him. He seemed almost apologetic for his job title.

There were reports to complete next, and Felicity had never been so glad of an interruption as when her phone rang. She’d taken off her glasses for a minute and rubbed her eyes as the desk sergeant told her she had a visitor. Oliver Queen and his bodyguard.

"Oliver Queen?” She glanced up. Lance was scowling at her. She shrugged. “Sure, send him back here,” she said into the phone before hanging up.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” said Detective Lance.

"We wrongfully arrested him and accused him of murder,” Felicity replied. “I don’t think saying no to him is a good idea right now. Besides,” she added, a slow smile spreading across her face, “meeting with a concerned citizen will get me away from this tower of paper.”

She grabbed her tablet and got up from her desk as Oliver entered the squad room, followed by Mr. Diggle. The bodyguard was in shirtsleeves, and his arms were huge. She gulped, wondering how much he knew about the digging she had done on Oliver’s behalf. When Lance called after her, she jumped.

“This is a temporary reprieve,” he said. “Don’t think I’m going to finish all this for you.”

Felicity approached the two men. “What can I do for you, Oliver?” she asked.

He inclined his head toward her. “Is there somewhere we can speak privately?”

She led them to an empty office down the hall. Mr. Diggle leaned against the desk as Oliver sat in the chair facing away from the window. Felicity took the seat across from him and tugged at the hem of her skirt. She never knew when to cross her legs.

“I see you came prepared,” said Oliver, nodding at the tablet in her hands.

“I figured you only want me for one thing.” Her mouth dropped open as soon as she said it. She covered by jumping to her feet and holding out her hand to the bodyguard. “Felicity Smoak,” she said.

He gave her a small, smug,  _annoying_ smile. “John Diggle,” he said, shaking her hand. “Call me Diggle, or Dig.”

“Got it.” She sat back down, crossed her ankles, and swung her legs to the side. She’d seen Julie Andrews do it in  _The Princess Diaries_ .

“I’m looking for someone,” said Oliver. “I’ve hit a dead end, and I thought maybe you could help.”

Felicity turned on her tablet. “I should add ‘personal internet researcher for Oliver Queen’ to my job title.”

He took a deep breath and smiled, wagging his head. Diggle’s smug smile had widened a bit.

“Happily, I mean,” she added. She looked down at her tablet and entered the unlock code.

“His name is Derek Reston,” Oliver said. “We were close before I . . . went away, and I want to get back in touch.”

She tapped the screen, opening her browser. “Guess you didn’t have Facebook on that island.”

“Nope, not even a MySpace account,” said Diggle. “It was a very dark time.”

Felicity did a basic search, finding very little on Derek Reston that was recent. His driver’s license gave her pause. He was in his mid-forties. That seemed a little old to be a close friend of Oliver Queen’s, but she didn’t say anything. A Queen Consolidated employee ID popped up in her image search.

“Oh, I guess you guys must have met at the factory,” she said.

Oliver leaned forward. “Wait, what factory?”

“The Queen steel factory,” Felicity informed him, pushing up her glasses. “Derek Reston worked there for fifteen years until it shut down in ’07.”

“Derek Reston worked for my father?”

Felicity looked up at him. “You weren’t really close friends, huh?”

Oliver sat back in his chair.

She found an article about the factory shutting down due to outsourcing and summarized it for him and Diggle. “They all pretty much lost their homes,” she concluded. “Including your ‘friend’.”

That seemed to be enough information for Oliver. He stood, shook her hand with a distracted smile, and then left with Diggle.

Felicity kept turning the conversation over in her head throughout the rest of the afternoon and part of the evening. At seven, Detective Lance told her to go home.

“But we still have work to do,” she protested half-heartedly.

“Did you sleep at all last night?” he asked.

She shook her head, reaching for her TARDIS mug. The coffee in it was cold, and the creamer had separated, leaving a sheen of oil on the liquid’s surface.

“I didn’t think so.” Lance took the mug from her hands and set it aside. “I have this damn party to go to, so you might as well head home.”

“What party?” Felicity asked. “It’s not another inappropriately themed night at the Queen mansion, is it?”

"No, but to tell you the truth, I don’t know if it’s better or worse.” He was being unusually solicitous, helping her into her coat. “Queen’s buddy Merlyn is throwing this fundraising shindig for the company my daughter works for. She dragged my drunk ass out of a bar, so now I have show my support at her swanky party.”

“A shindig, huh?” Felicity teased. “Not a hootenanny?”

The detective cocked an eyebrow. “I choose to let that go because you’re sleep-deprived. It won’t happen again.”

Lance declared her unfit to drive. Felicity didn’t put up a fight. Her eyes felt like they weren’t focusing right, and everything was sounding muffled and far away, like she was walking down a long tunnel. She handed over her keys and had a laugh watching tough-guy Detective Quentin Lance practically fold himself in thirds to settle into the driver’s seat of her Mini Cooper.

Lance stood awkwardly in her living room, waiting for his cab to arrive. Luckily he didn’t have to wait long. Having her brand-new partner in her house was just too strange. And there was the added worry that she might have left something out that would clue him in to her shady extracurricular activities. But she checked the room as soon as he left, and saw nothing to implicate herself.

Felicity made coffee for herself. It was barely seven o’clock, too early to go to bed, even as tired as she was. But the caffeine had little effect, and she found herself slumped on the couch an hour later, her cheek damp with drool and her phone buzzing incessantly.

Five minutes later, Felicity shoved her feet back into her shoes, threw on her jacket, and grabbed her car keys. She was wide awake now. An alarm had been tripped at the Redwood United Bank. It had to be the Royal Flush Gang. The Hood had prevented them from getting away with their second haul, so it made sense that they would try once more. Felicity was supposed to swing by the fundraiser to pick up Detective Lance on her way to the bank. They wouldn’t be first on the scene, not by a long shot, but they needed to be there.

After arguing with a doorman and a security guard, and flashing her badge more than once, Felicity finally burst into the ballroom, nearly crashing into Tommy Merlyn.

“Hey,” he said, catching her by the shoulders, “where’s the fire?” He searched her face. “There’s not an actual fire, is there?”

She pulled back, smelling champagne on his breath. A  _lot_ of champagne, like he’d just chugged a glass or three.

“No fire,” said Felicity. “Is Detective Lance here?”

“Oh, yeah, you’re the new partner.” Tommy looked her up and down. “Sorry, but you are way too pretty to be a cop.”

He didn’t seem to know where Lance was, just muttered something darkly about Laurel and then wandered off. With him out of her way, Felicity searched the room, but it was crowded and she was just too short. She’d have to wade into the fray.

Elbowing her way across the dance floor, which was full of minglers, not dancers, Felicity was just about ready to see if there was microphone on a stage or something that she could use to make an announcement. But then a tuxedoed man in front of her stepped away, and there, only ten feet away, was Oliver Queen.

He stood near the bar, and Diggle was whispering to him. They were both dressed in suits and ties, but it was pretty clear from the size of his arms and the subdued colors he wore that Diggle was the bodyguard and Oliver’s was the name on the invitation.

Diggle looked intense, and whatever he said changed Oliver’s entire demeanor. In a flash he went from looking bored to looking for the nearest exit. He started to cross the room, Diggle close behind, when an older blonde woman stepped in front of him. Felicity gulped. Moira Queen. She exchanged some tense words with Oliver, his eyes darting toward the door, and then she raised her voice enough for Felicity to overhear her parting shot.

“Honestly, Oliver, there are times I wonder why you bother coming home at all.”

Her imperious tone was tinged with sadness. Oliver watched her walk away, looking as if he’d been slapped. Then Diggle nudged his elbow, and they hustled out of the room together. Felicity stared after them, wondering what could have been so urgent—for someone who never seemed to do anything besides give her weird computer and internet problems to solve—that Oliver would abandon his friends and family in the middle of a high-profile event.

Felicity’s phone buzzed in her pocket, and she brought it up to her ear without checking the display.

“Smoak! Where the hell are you?” Lance snapped.

Felicity glanced around. She didn’t see her partner anywhere. “I’m in the ballroom,” she said. “Where are  _you_ ?”

“Standing on the sidewalk in my tux, looking like a jackass. What are you doing inside?”

“I’m seeing how the other half lives.”

Felicity sighed. He needed to work on his sense of humor. “I’m looking for you. What else would I be doing?”

“Just get out here,” the detective growled.

She rushed to the door, not hesitating this time to bump and nudge people out of her way. There were lots of snobby-sounding “excuse me’s” and one “excuse  _you_ ,” which came from some dork with bleached teeth and a stupid haircut who was practically drooling over Laurel Lance.

Detective Lance met her at the entrance and followed her to her car. Felicity’s mind was still on the exchange she’d seen between Oliver and his mother, and his abrupt exit. She almost missed Lance mumbling that the robbery would probably be over by the time they got to the bank. And in fact, it was.

The heavy Friday night traffic was difficult to navigate, and since they were in Felicity’s personal car, there was no bubblegum police light to warn other drivers out of their way. Lance was tightly wound, furious that Felicity didn’t have a police radio in her car, but at least he wasn’t backseat-driving. She pulled over behind the police blockade with a screech of her tires, and her partner was out of the car and closing in on the bank with long strides before she even had the keys out of the ignition.

Felicity was waiting outside, waving her badge in the face of an older patrolman who could not be convinced that she was a detective and did belong at the crime scene, when Lance rejoined her.

“Perkins, stop embarrassing yourself,” he said to the patrolman. “She’s with me.”

Felicity took a step toward the bank, but Detective Lance stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.

“No, Smoak, you’re sitting this one out,” he said.

She tried to protest, but he shook his head.

“You can’t do any good here, kid. You drove over here like a stoned sleepwalker, and you’re definitely not up for any more dead bodies.”

Her mouth dropped open. “There are fatalities?”

“One of the robbers took one to the chest,” said Lance. “The security guard who shot him is wounded too, not sure how bad. But he was conscious enough to say the Hood was there.”

“You don’t think the Hood shot the robber, do you?” Felicity asked.

“I think we’re learning that guns aren’t really his style.” He frowned at her. “And now you’re going home.” He waved Perkins over and told the man to give her a ride, then shouldered Felicity toward the perimeter.

“At least tell me if there’s an ID on the dead guy,” she said, digging in her heels.

Lance sighed noisily. “Derek Reston, according to the expired driver’s license in his wallet. Seems to have been off the grid for a few years.”

Stunned, Felicity gave in. Without any resistance, Lance nearly shoved her off her feet.

“What?” he asked. “You know him or something?”

“No, I’m just . . .” Felicity shook her head. “I’m just tired, that’s all.”

“Go home, Smoak,” said Lance in a gentler tone. “Take a couple days. The paperwork will still be here when you get back.”

“I’m sure.”

“I’ll save it for you,” he said with a smile.


	16. Where Things Turn Sketchy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Felicity has suspicions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you for your patience, which I shall reward with this nice long, juicy chapter. I plan to not wait long between updates too, having already started Chapter 17. And FYI, I have decided that EotM will only cover season 1. I think that's a big enough commitment as it is.

** Chapter 16—Where Things Turn Sketchy **

****

Felicity rolled her chair forward and propped her elbows on Detective Lance’s desk.

“So . . . lunch?”

“Kinda busy right now, Smoak,” Lance said without looking up.

“With what? I’m the one who did all the paperwork, in exchange for seven glorious hours of sleep,” she said, leaning back and stretching her arms over her head.

“I still have to write my own report.”

Felicity watched him hunt and peck on the keyboard for about fifteen seconds before she stopped him by covering the computer screen with her hands.

“Smoak,” he growled.

“Seeing you pound on the keyboard like that wounds me deeply,” she said. “You’re fulfilling the grouchy-cop cliché.”

“Oh, well, say no more. I wouldn’t want to be a cliché,” he replied, sarcasm oozing from every word.

“Can I just—” Felicity rolled her chair around his desk and bumped him aside. She began typing, referring to his scrawled notes.

Lance watched her for a minute, then leaned back in his chair. “Someday you’re gonna be one of those moms who does her kids’ homework for them.”

The phone on his desk rang, and he reached past her to grab it. “Detective Lance,” he said into the receiver.

Felicity tuned out his voice, concentrating on deciphering his handwriting. The sooner she finished, the sooner they could grab some lunch. She felt like Chinese—it was an egg roll kind of day.

“So I’m driving.”

She glanced up. Lance had hung up the phone and was looking at her like she’d just sprouted a third arm.

“Did you hear anything I just said?” he asked.

Felicity shook her head. “I stopped listening after you answered the phone.”

“Stop doing my homework and get your head in the game. We got a drive-by shooting outside Queen Consolidated.” He leaned around her and grabbed his notebook, shoving it in his jacket pocket. “One dead at the scene. Moira Queen’s being taken to the hospital.”

Felicity half-rose from her chair. “Was she shot?”

“Hit her head on the sidewalk,” said Lance. “Which you’d know if you’d been paying attention.”

“I’d have been paying attention if your awful handwriting wasn’t taking up all my concentration,” Felicity replied, but he was already heading for the door. She grabbed her purse from her desk and hurried to catch up with him.

Uniformed officers had already taped off the crime scene, a stretch of sidewalk outside Queen Consolidated, and the body had been covered with a tarp. It would piss off the techs, but Felicity thought it was a smart move considering the swarm of reporters and onlookers just outside the perimeter.

Lance went up to one of the officers while Felicity approached the body. Major Crimes meant homicides, and homicides meant bodies. If she wanted to keep her job, she’d have to learn how to control her emotions at a murder scene.

With her back to the crowd, Felicity lifted the edge of the tarp. One shot to the chest. Small-caliber entry wound, thank God, so the really gross stuff wouldn’t be visible. The man’s eyes were still open but had begun to cloud over. Something about him was familiar.

“Are you about to contaminate evidence?” Lance asked, appearing at her side. “You look a little pale.”

Felicity shook her head. “I’m fine, but look.” She raised the corner of the tarp a little higher. “Recognize him?”

The detective crouched down for a better look. “I’ll be damned.” He rose again. “It’s Copani, one of Frank Bertinelli’s men. How’d  _you_ recognize him?”

She shrugged. “Major Crimes. It seemed like a good idea to familiarize myself with the big players on the seedier side of Starling City.”

Something approximating a genuine smile crept across Quentin Lance’s face. “Look who’s been doing her homework.”

Felicity beamed back at him. It was the first time he’d acted impressed since she hacked Oliver Queen’s ankle monitor. It felt good.

“Well, between him and Moira Queen, I’d say this guy was the likelier target,” Lance continued. “Tell me what you know about Bertinelli.”

“He’s in construction, but in the way that Al Capone was in the furniture business,” said Felicity. “He’s shady, and he collects a lot of shady characters around him. Copani worked for him extorting protection money.” Felicity drummed her fingers on her lower lip. “There’ve been some other deaths among Bertinelli’s employees, right?”

Lance nodded. “Copani makes three. Let’s go talk to Moira Queen while CSU does their thing.”

“Oh, yay,” Felicity said, sarcastic.

For someone who wasn’t even being formally admitted to Starling City General, Moira Queen was being treated eponymously, like a queen. No languishing in a crowded ER for her. She was relaxing in a private room while her doctor examined her CT scan. Detective Lance and Felicity rode the elevator up to the eighth floor and headed down the hall. As they rounded the corner, a female voice rose in volume.

“You left Mom in the street. Alone and hurt, in the street. To get a license plate?”

Thea Queen stood with her arms crossed outside her mother’s room. Her school uniform was disheveled, the shirt untucked and her tie askew. She was facing off with Oliver.

“You don’t believe me?” he asked his sister.

Thea sighed. “I love you,” she said. “Mom loves you. But it’s getting hard when you won’t be truthful with us.” She turned to go back into the room when she spotted Felicity. The young detective smiled at her, but Thea said nothing and entered the room.

Oliver shoved his hands in his pockets and walked toward them, looking from Lance to Felicity like he couldn’t decide who he was least happy to see.

“Detectives,” he said. “Do you have any leads on the shooter?” His tone was all business now instead of the quiet, almost vulnerable way he’d spoken to his sister.

Felicity looked to Lance, but he was silent. And clenching his jaw, she could see.

“No leads yet,” she said to Oliver. “Did you get a look at him?”

“No.” Oliver took his hands out of his pockets. “He was wearing a helmet.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll find him.” Felicity looked down and saw her hand on his arm, her bright blue fingernails vibrant against his black sleeve. She had no idea when she’d raised her hand, but Detective Lance was looking at it too. She could almost hear his teeth grinding. She dropped her hand.

Oliver cleared his throat, addressing Lance. “My head of security is on his way. I want to make sure there are men outside my mother’s door. She needs to be protected.”

“Well, you know your family’s at the tippy-top of my list of priorities,” Lance said drily, “but the guy she was with was connected. Mobbed-up-to-the-eyeballs connected. She wasn’t the target.”

Oliver abruptly walked away down the hall, brushing past Felicity.

Lance huffed. “And you’re welcome.”

Moira Queen was in the process of being discharged when Felicity and Detective Lance entered her room. She looked up briefly, then turned back to the nurse, who ignored the interruption. Thea glared at them from her perch on the wide window sill.

“Who are you here to arrest this time?” Thea asked. “You’re running low on options.”

“Thea, don’t be rude,” Mrs. Queen admonished her daughter. With a regal gesture, she dismissed the nurse, and then gave her full attention to Lance and Felicity. “Detectives, surely this can wait. It’s been a long and difficult day, and I’d like to get settled at home.”

“We understand that,” said Lance, “but with the shooter still at large, it’s imperative that we get all witness statements as soon as possible.” He whipped out his notebook.

Felicity approached Thea. “We’ll post someone at the door until your mom leaves,” she said. “And we’ll have a marked car at the end of your driveway all night. But for what it’s worth, we don’t think the shooter was aiming for your mother.”

Thea laughed bitterly. “I’d say thanks, but I don’t exactly have much confidence in the cops right now,” she said. “You people thought Ollie was a murderer.  _Ollie_ .”

“I understand why you feel like you can’t trust the cops,” Felicity said, putting a hand on her arm. “But I’m not asking you to trust the whole department. Just trust me.”

Thea’s expression softened a little. “I do,” she said. “Because I know Ollie trusts you, and he’s not exactly free with his trust these days.”

“He told you about me?” Felicity asked.

“He said you helped him out with some computer stuff,” Thea replied. “I heard him tell Walter a few weeks ago.”

“Thea, sweetheart, could you bring my clothes over here?” Moira asked. “Detective Lance is finished, and I’m ready to go home.”

Thea smiled at Felicity and then crossed the room to her mother’s bedside.

“Where is Oliver?” asked Moira.

“He took off,” Thea said with a sigh. “Again.”

Detective Lance nodded toward the door, and Felicity followed him out of the room.

“You smooth things over with the kid?” he asked her as they went down the hallway.

“I think so,” said Felicity. “Did you get anything new out of Mrs. Queen?”

Lance shook his head. “She didn’t even see the shooter. All I learned was that Copani fell backward when he was shot, knocking her down. Which only confirms in my mind that he was the target, not her.”

Back at headquarters, felicity was on her fourth egg roll as she and her partner looked at evidence and tossed ideas around.

“So you think it’s one of the other mob families?” she asked him. “Like the Chinese Triad?”

“No,” said Lance, wiping a drip of soy sauce off his bottom lip.

“Then who?”

He flicked a wasabi packet at the board. The police artist’s sketch of the Hood had been moved down to the corner to accommodate photos and notes on the three Bertinelli employees who’d been murdered.

“Well, according to the coroner’s reports, none of the vics took a clean shot,” he said. “Half the bullets missed. Our killer is not a pro. That, to me, rules out hits from other families.”

Felicity chewed and swallowed. “Being an amateur’s not stopping him from pulling the trigger.”

“No, that’s up to us,” said Detective Lance. “If Bertinelli blames the Triad or anyone else, this could blow up into an all-out mob war.”

By the time she left for home that night, Felicity felt like she could have qualified in court as an expert on organized crime in Starling City. She read fast and had consumed just about everything the police department had on Frank Bertinelli and his criminal enterprise. Her thoughts lingered on what she’d learned about Bertinelli’s daughter as she drove up to the Italian restaurant up the street from her apartment.

Felicity had experienced loss in her life, and it had changed her, but it was hard to fathom the kind of despair Helena Bertinelli must have felt when her fiancé was murdered by an unknown assailant. Her father’s business put the lives of everyone around him in danger, but even knowing that couldn’t prepare someone for losing the person she loved.

Lost in thought, Felicity walked into the restaurant on autopilot. She barely remembered paying for her take-out order and didn’t really come back to herself until she was in her parking space.

Once inside her apartment, Felicity fed Jpeg and then laid out her dinner on the coffee table. TV seemed like a good idea to turn off her brain. She switched on the remote with one hand and speared a bite of smoked salmon and Gouda tortellini with her fork in the other hand.

Three hours and six episodes of  _The X-Files_ later, she was stuffed and dozing on the couch. The apartment was kind of stuffy, so she had opened the window a couple of inches. That made it easy to hear the gunshots.

She lived near the Glades, but not so close that the sound of gunshots was par for the course. There were a lot of gunshots, and they were close by. Grabbing her phone, Felicity called in to Dispatch and gave her badge number.

“Shots fired,” she said. “I’m at 1614 Aurora, just up the road from Carter Street.” She snatched up her purse, unsnapped the built-in holster, and withdrew her gun. “The shots were close, but—”

“How many?” asked the dispatcher.

“I don’t know. More than one. A lot more.” Felicity checked the magazine and then slammed it back into the pistol. “I’m going to check it out.”

“Negative, 2115. Wait for backup.”

Felicity rolled her eyes. She wasn’t going to charge in alone, gun blazing, but she wasn’t about to return to the couch until she heard sirens, either. She ended the call, shoved her feet into a pair of flip-flops, and went to look for the source of the gunshots.

The street was deserted, the threat of violence having scared off anyone who might have lingered. Felicity edged along the sidewalk, keeping to the shadows. Up ahead, a door slammed open. She pressed up against the building, her shoulder blades digging into the brick, and clicked off her gun’s safety.

A slim figure in black leather darted out from a doorway and leapt onto a motorcycle parked illegally on the sidewalk. The rider wore a helmet, but Felicity thought she saw a swath of dark hair peeking out from the back. The mystery motorcyclist gunned the engine and took off with a squeal of tires on pavement.

Felicity crept forward. The person had come out of Russo’s, the restaurant she’d gotten her take-out from hours earlier. Again, the door flew open, and Felicity flattened herself against the building. Someone else, someone she recognized, charged out of the restaurant and looked up the street. Someone clad in green leather, with a hood pulled low over his face.

She bit back a gasp as he turned in her direction. He was looking for the biker, she knew, but it would only take one close glance for the Hood to spot her in the shadows. Felicity wished she could melt into the wall.

“Which way?”

She jumped. With his hood covering his features, she couldn’t be sure he was looking at her.

“ _Felicity_ . Which way?”

Her gasp slipped out this time. That deep, weirdly electronic voice had said her name. The Hood knew her name.

The gun she held behind her back felt extra-heavy. With her left hand, she pointed up the street, in the direction the motorcyclist had gone.

He nodded at her, then ducked into an alley between buildings. Moments later, a sleek black motorcycle with a more powerful engine roared out of the alley. Its rider wore a helmet—and green leather.

Felicity slumped against the wall. The street was quiet once again, but she stayed in the shadows until she saw a cop car pull up in front of Russo’s, lights flashing. She engaged the safety again on her gun. Pulling her badge from her pocket, she raised her hands and stepped away from the shelter of the building.

Two uniformed officers got out of the car, guns drawn. Felicity stopped, keeping her hands in the air.

“Detective Smoak, Major Crimes,” she said.

One officer approached the restaurant, and the other came toward Felicity. He glanced at her badge and then nodded. She lowered her gun.

“What’s going on?” he asked. “Are you on duty?”

“No,” said Felicity. “I live a few doors down. I heard gunshots and called it in.”

“How do you want to handle it?”

Felicity stared at him. Was  _he_ deferring to  _her_ ?

“Detective.”

She blinked. “What?”

“I asked how you want to handle this?”

She thought for a second. “I’m a witness,” she decided. “I’ll have to wait out here.”

The officer nodded again. He joined his partner at the front entrance of Russo’s.

“Be careful,” she called out to them. “I saw two people run out, but there could still be a shooter inside.”

Felicity watched them enter the building. More officers would arrive any minute. It was time to call her partner.

Predictably, Lance flipped. He seemed more upset about her approaching the scene than about her second encounter with the Hood, but she figured that could come later. He ordered her to stay where she was until he got there.

She shivered. She hadn’t bothered with a jacket when she ran out of her apartment.

The cop who’d first spoken to Felicity led a woman out of the restaurant. It was Gina, Mr. Russo’s daughter. Gina had brought out Felicity’s meal and ran her debit card. The woman’s gaze landed on her. Felicity waved.

“You can wait here with the detective,” the officer said to Gina. “I’ll send your father out in a minute.”

Felicity opened her mouth to protest. Witnesses were supposed to be separated. But it was his mistake, and she was off-duty, and Gina was clearly shaken.

“Gina, are you okay?” She put her arm around the other woman’s shoulders.

“I—There—There are bodies,” said Gina. “Dead men, in the restaurant—” Her voice faltered, and she leaned hard on Felicity.

“You’re pale. Why don’t we just sit down?” Felicity led her to the curb, and they sat. “Were you hurt at all? Was your dad?”

Gina pulled at the hem of her black dress. “I’m not hurt. My father—they hit him, but that was before the hooded man showed up and they started shooting.”

Emilio Russo burst out of the restaurant. “Gina!” he cried.

“Papa!” Gina leapt to her feet and hugged her father.

Felicity stayed seated on the curb and looked away. Detective Lance drove up in his personal vehicle, a beige Camry. There was never a more blah car. She waited for him to get out. He still wore his work clothes too. She wondered if he’d gone home at all.

“Damn, Smoak,” he said when he’d come to stand in front of her. “I can’t leave you alone for five minutes without you getting neck-deep in something.”

“It’s a gift,” she replied.

He gave her a hand, hauling her to her feet. “I’m going in, see what we’ve got, and then you’re gonna tell me everything.”

Felicity nodded. He turned, but she called him back with a “Hey!”

“Can I lock my gun in your car?” she asked. “It’s, um . . . it’s getting a little heavy.”

Lance smiled. It was like seeing a rare animal in the wild—she froze, worried that any movement would send his smile scurrying back to its hiding place. He tossed her his keys and went into the restaurant.

After locking her gun in the glove compartment, Felicity searched the car for a jacket, or anything she could use to keep warm, but there was nothing. She went back to Gina and her father. Mr. Russo had a big knot on his head but otherwise seemed fine. Physically, anyway. He was working himself into a state over what might happen to his business.

Detective Lance came out again and beckoned to Felicity.

“Two vics inside,” he said in a low voice, glancing at the Russos. “Bertinelli’s guys. Pretty low on the food chain. I guess he’s being forced to promote from within.”

“Do we know what happened?” she asked.

“One guy took a bullet to the heart. The other one has multiple gunshot wounds. It’s a mess in there—broken glass, flipped tables. Hard to tell how it went down.” He nodded toward the Russos. “You talk to them?”

“Gina told me about the bodies, that’s all. I’m a witness, so I didn’t ask any questions.”

“You’re a witness in this instance, but it’s part of the Bertinelli investigation,” said Lance.

“What does that mean for me?” she asked.

“It means you’re still on Bertinelli, but you keep this one at arm’s length.” Lance rubbed his hand over the crown of his head. “I’ll talk to the owner and his daughter, and Officer Mead will take your statement. Then you go back home and put on some real shoes because we have work to do.”

“Always so critical of my footwear.”

“And Smoak? I haven’t forgotten about the Hood,” he said before walking away.

Felicity gave her statement to Officer Mead, the cop who’d led Gina out of Russo’s. Then she retrieved her gun from Detective Lance’s car and walked home.

When she was just inside the front door, the Imperial March from  _Star Wars_ played out from her cell phone. She glanced at the display, even though she knew who was calling.  _My mother_ , it read. No picture on the display. Felicity did not want her mom’s face staring up at her whenever the woman called. She tapped the “Ignore” button.

Jpeg rubbed his face against her leg, purring.

“I know, baby,” Felicity said to him. “There’s nothing I’d like more than to go to bed with you.” She cringed. “Not like  _that_ , because that would be . . . interspecies . . . Oh my God, I’m babbling to a cat now.”

She was still in her work clothes, but her shirt was wrinkled and there were spots on her pants where she’d splashed her potato gnocchi soup. Not to mention the flip-flops. A shower would have been nice, but it would take too long. She ran a brush through her hair and redid her ponytail, then changed clothes.

Jpeg mrowled in protest as Felicity returned her gun to her purse and ignored another call from her mom. She gave him a couple of treats as consolation for her having to leave again.

Felicity met Detective Lance at the station. He was just getting to his desk. She walked past him and approached the board. She unpinned the Hood sketch and examined it closely.

“Yeah, it’s fairly accurate,” she murmured, “but I’m pretty sure he has a . . .”

“A what?” asked Lance.

_A mole_ , she’d been about to say,  _to the right side of his mouth_ .

“A more chiseled jaw,” she said. “This one isn’t sharp enough. He could cut granite with that thing. Which would be really awkward, getting your chin down to the level of the stone . . .”

He held up a CD in a plastic case. “Want to look at some surveillance footage?”

“Finally, something that involves a computer.” She took the CD from him and went to her desk.

She couldn’t be sure about the mole. It had been dark. She was running on adrenaline. It could have been a shadow, a trick of the light. And there’d be no reason to mention a trick of the light to Detective Lance. No reason at all.

Felicity slipped the CD into the drive on her computer as Lance pulled up a chair.

“Just skip right to the time of the shooting,” he said. “We’ll start there.”

The footage was less than awesome. Picture, but no sound. It was clear enough, but it seemed there was only one camera, aimed at the middle of the dining room.

“Is this the only angle you got?” Lance asked.

“That’s it,” said Felicity. “I recommended a company to Gina when they first wanted to put in cameras, but I guess she didn’t take my advice. They totally chintzed out on their security package.”

They watched in silence as the crime played out in black and white on the screen. Nick Salvati, Bertinell’s right hand, forced his way into the restaurant, followed by a couple of thick-necked goons. After a brief verbal exchange, Salvati pistol-whipped Mr. Russo. When Gina reacted, one of the goons yanked her away from her father and pinned her arms behind her back.

Then the Hood burst in. With his bow in one hand, he fought with the closest goon, kicking and punching in a way that made it obvious he’d had some serious martial arts training. Nearly out of the frame, there was a brief flash.

Felicity pointed. “Was that a muzzle flash?” As she spoke, it happened again.

“Definitely,” said Lance. “Somebody’s in the wings with a gun, shooting at these guys.” He leaned back in his chair. “What do you have from earlier?”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Felicity, giving him the side-eye. “This is my first time watching it.”

“Just go back a few hours and then speed it up.”

She sighed, then did what he asked.

“That looks like a business dinner,” she said, pointing. “Birthday dinner.”

“How can you tell?”

“Because that’s a cake,” said Felicity.

“A cake? No.” Lance leaned in, squinting at the monitor. “It looks like a tire.”

“Because  _that_ makes sense. A tire with a candle stuck in it.”

“Any guests of the Chinese persuasion?” he asked.

“You said you didn’t think it was one of the other families,” Felicity reminded him.

“Humor me.”

Felicity started zooming in on faces, quickly zooming back out once she’d seen their features.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait, wait a second,” said Lance. “What was that?” He snatched the mouse from her.

“Help yourself.”

“Come on,” he mumbled at the computer.

He zoomed in on a couple Felicity hadn’t gotten to yet. She recognized the dark-haired woman on the right as Helena Bertinelli. And the man sitting across the table from her was Oliver Queen.

“Son of a bitch,” Lance muttered.

“Well, that’s just not . . . great . . .” Felicity’s voice trailed off as she looked closer at the image paused on the screen, the image of Oliver Queen.

It could have been a trick of the light. Or maybe the quality of the video was worse than she’d thought. Because that couldn’t be a mole just to the right of his mouth. It couldn’t be.


	17. Honesty Is Such a Lonely Word

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Felicity arrives reluctantly at a conclusion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm very tired and not feeling well, so I don't know what I can tell you about this chapter. It does contain a bonus scene at the end that I felt was needed. The title is from Billy Joel's song "Honesty." Thanks to thatmasquedgirl for reading this and talking out some issues with me and pointing out a typo. :D

Chapter 17—Honesty Is Such a Lonely Word

 

Two days later, a Saturday, Felicity was curled up on the couch with Jpeg in her lap, half-watching a college football game as she worked on her tablet. Lieutenant Pike had ordered her and Detective Lance to take the weekend off because they had maxed out on overtime.

Felicity ought to have been cleaning the kitchen, or grocery shopping, or having her roots done. But she had slept in, and moving from her bed to the couch was enough productivity for one morning. So of course there was a knock at the door, forcing her to move Jpeg off her lap and get up. She rose on tiptoe to check the peephole. It was lance, dressed in civilian clothes and looking fidgety. She undid the locks and opened the door.

“You do remember we were ordered not to work this weekend, right?” she said, standing aside to let him enter.

“We were ordered to go home,” he replied. He shoved his hands in his pockets and glanced around. “No one said anything about not working.”

“ _I’m_ saying something about not working.  _I’m_ attempting to relax.”

Lance nodded at the tablet in her hand. “Don’t tell me you haven’t been doing something case-related on that thing.”

As someone who always gave immediate voice to her thoughts, Felicity was a terrible liar, so she didn’t usually bother. At this moment, though, she couched her lie in terms of the truth.

“I’ve been trying to identify the Hood,” she admitted.

“Any progress?”

She shook her head. “There just isn’t enough to go on. The only physical evidence we have is a homemade, untraceable arrow. I’m going super in-depth on everyone he’s targeted, but it’s a big job.” She set down her tablet. “What have  _you_ been doing?”

“Staring at my notes. But there’s something bothering me.”

“Other than the usual?” Felicity asked.

“Funny,” he said, but he wasn’t smiling. “I feel like I need to go talk to Queen, and I hoped you go with me. Maybe stand between us, hold me back if he says something stupid.”

That made her smile. “Yeah, sure,” she said. “I’ll just go change really quick.”

Lance sniffed. “What for? You look fine.”

“Are you kidding me?”

Felicity gestured at her dreidel pajamas. Hanukkah hadn’t started yet, but they were so warm and comfy. There was a damp spot on her pants where Jpeg had happily drooled. Her ponytail was disheveled from sleep, and though it was almost noon, she hadn’t even brushed her teeth yet.

“I’m going to change and do something about my morning breath,” she said. “It won’t take long. Have a seat.”

She went into her bedroom and closed the door behind her. Digging through her closet, she tried to slow the frantic pace of her thoughts.

It had taken one Google image search the night before for Felicity to confirm the identity of the Hood. Every close-up photo of Oliver, older and more recent, clearly showed the mole just to the right of his lower lip. She’d then had two glasses of wine and nearly a full pint of ice cream, and then she’d worked late into the night trying to reconcile everything she knew about the vigilante with everything she knew about Oliver Queen. But the pieces didn’t all fit, and she’d gone to bed frustrated, confused, and a little nauseous.

What Felicity had told her partner was the truth, in a way. She didn’t have enough evidence to say for certain that Oliver spent his off time shooting arrows and snapping necks. The mole was big—it was huge.

“But not literally,” she said to herself as she randomly grabbed a shirt. “The mole is a big deal. But it’s not a fingerprint, or DNA, or a purchase order for a compound bow with his name at the top. I need more.”

Felicity quickly changed clothes and combed her hair into a ponytail. After brushing her teeth, she returned to the living room. Detective Lance hadn’t taken a seat. He stood near the bookcase, perusing the shelves and glancing at framed photos from her days at MIT.

“So what’s this about, exactly?” she asked him, slipping her coat on.

“I gotta square things with Oliver Queen, that’s all.” Lance withdrew his keys from his jacket. “And you’ll be there because you’re my partner.”

“And to keep you from killing him.”

“And that,” Lance agreed.

They were pulling into the driveway in front of the Queen mansion when something occurred to Felicity.

“Is Mrs. Queen here?” she asked.

Lance shrugged. “Doubt it. Probably has some charity lunch or board meeting.”

Felicity breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. She’s a little scary.”

His response wasn’t totally reassuring, so Felicity trailed a little behind him as he approached the front door and knocked. It seemed like such a big, stately house should have a big, stately doorbell. One that sounded like a gong. She wasn’t sure anyone could even hear a knock in a house that big, and she definitely didn’t expect Oliver Queen himself to open the door.

She couldn’t look at him. Felicity was sure her face would give everything away, just as much as his would. It was ridiculous, but she was putting off seeing that mole live and in person for as long as she could.

“Detectives,” he said. “Is everything okay?”

Lance took a deep breath. “Your buddy with the arrows was at Russo’s last night.”

“And I was there earlier with a date,” said Oliver. “So, what, you think I’m the hood guy again?”

“No,” Lance scoffed. “Your date, Helena Bertinelli? If I were you, I’d stay away from her. Her family is bad news on a good day.”

Felicity risked a glance up, surprised at his display of worry. Big mistake. Her eyes met Oliver’s, and her gaze strayed to his lip.

Oliver looked back at Lance. “Why the sudden concern for my well-being?” he asked.

“A few weeks ago, I made a mistake. I almost got you killed,” Lance said.

“And you felt like you owed me one?”

“If I did, as far as I’m concerned, this clears the books.” He turned on his heel and walked away.

Felicity lingered on the porch for a moment because her brain was just totally silent and apparently it was connected to her feet, which wouldn’t move.

“Thank you for being discreet,” Oliver said, putting his hand on her arm.

Her eyes snapped up to his again. Was it written on her face?

“I realize I’m asking you to keep secrets from your partner, but trust me, this has nothing to do with Detective Lance, and there’s nothing to be gained from him knowing about the things I’ve asked you to do for me,” he continued.

She sighed again. He didn’t know. But she still couldn’t speak. She just nodded and then followed Lance back to the car.

“That actually went well,” he said, buckling his seatbelt. “Thanks for coming with me.”

“Yeah.”

Lance paused with his hand on the key in the ignition. “You okay?”

“Me? I’m awesome,” Felicity said after a moment’s hesitation. “Ready to go home and put my pajamas back on.”

She could feel him giving her the side-eye. He was a good detective, and she was crap at lying. So she stared out the window as he drove off the Queens’ property.

Neither of them spoke again until he pulled up in front of Felicity’s place. She thanked him for the ride, which started a ramble about how silly it was to thank him for dragging her out on her day off. Thankfully, she was able to stop before she could blurt out any of the secrets she was keeping from him.

Once inside, Felicity didn’t take the time to change into her pj’s again. She shrugged out of her jacket, tossed it onto a bar stool, and sat on the couch, tablet in hand. Jpeg, purring as he rubbed his face against the edge of the screen, soon settled next to her.

“Look,” she said to him as she opened an app she’d created herself, “I’m about to break the law, so avert your eyes, okay?”

Jpeg ignored her, tucking his pink nose between his paws.

“All right, then,” Felicity muttered. “Time to commit yet another felony.”

Nothing about her deep search app was legal. It culled from dozens of law enforcement databases and Interpol, as well as extensive searches into online news sources. As the search ran, she scribbled a few notes for improvements she could make. Piggyback hacks of e-mail accounts, for instance, to gain access to information that might not have made it into news articles and official reports.

The search would take hours. Felicity set her tablet aside and curled up around Jpeg, a comma curving next to his backslash. The remote was within easy reach, but she picked up her phone instead. Scrolling through her list of contacts, she stopped at his number and opened a new text message.

What would she say? “I know who you are, maybe”? She shook her head and closed the text without typing anything. She used her phone’s browser to look for articles on Helena Bertinelli, but there was very little. Either the mobster’s daughter flew under the radar or she wasn’t involved in the shadier side of her dad’s business. The few articles Felicity did find were about the murder of her fiancé, Michael, and contained only brief references to Helena.

But still, mobster’s daughter. What was Oliver thinking, dating her? If he had done any checking into the guy who’d been shot in front of his mother, he had to know who Helena was. Felicity had sort of thought he was done with casual hookups, that his island experience had turned him serious, but maybe she was wrong. He might know about Helena’s father or he might not. Maybe he didn’t care. Maybe it was only dinner with a beautiful woman.

Her stomach was growling, so she went grocery shopping. Then, feeling industrious, she cleaned her apartment, started a load of laundry, and touched up her roots with a kit from the store. She refused to let herself check the tablet even once, knowing the search would still be running.

It was getting late when her phone rang. She was tucking into a massive salad after chopping a ton of fresh vegetables. The amount of dressing she’d poured on it probably canceled out the benefits of the roughage, but it still made her feel like she was doing something good for herself.

The call was short. With a sigh, Felicity covered her salad and put it in the fridge. She slipped on a pair of flats and grabbed her jacket.

“So much for a weekend off,” she muttered as she went out the door.

There was no shortage of creepy abandoned warehouses in the Glades and at the docks. Nick Salvati, Frank Bertinelli’s right hand man, lay dead on the gritty floor of a warehouse deep in the Glades. As Felicity had pulled up outside, she wondered if her car would still be there when she came back out.

The scene was quiet. Big, with yellow crime scene tape roping off the entire place, which was basically one big room. Lance had kicked everyone out but the crime scene techs. They went to work. Felicity looked away from the three bodies and tried to concentrate on telling Lance what the fingerprint tech had just told her.

“No usable prints except for the victims’”, she said, “So we have one GSW to the chest—”

“Then who broke the necks of Salvati and his buddy?” Lance asked, indicating the corpses. “Last time we saw something like that was the kidnapping of Queen and Merlyn.”

“It’s been a while since the Hood broke anyone’s neck,” Felicity said. “And I don’t see any arrows lying around.”

“Well, better pray that Frank Bertinelli blames the Hood for this. Otherwise Starling City will be ground zero to World War Three.”

She wasn’t listening anymore. She was staring at the dead man with the hole in his chest.

“That’s not . . .” She edged around a tech who was photographing some miniscule piece of evidence on the floor.

“What are you thinking, Smoak?” asked Detective Lance.

“Two chairs,” she said, pointing. One was upright. The other was twenty feet away, toppled over next to Salvati. “Did you find any restraints?” she asked the tech with the camera.

He shrugged. “We haven’t processed over there yet.”

That meant she couldn’t check for herself. She didn’t want to risk contaminating evidence.

“Smoak.”

Felicity looked up. “There were two of them,” she said, adrenaline beginning to sizzle through her veins. “Two chairs.” She pointed again. “Two causes of death—bullet, broken necks.”

“You think Salvati grabbed a couple people and they killed their way out of here?” Lance crossed his arms.

“I know it sounds a little crazy,” Felicity began.

"Not crazy,” said Lance. “There were two at Russo’s. The Hood and the motorcyclist.”

“But the Hood was  _chasing_ the motorcyclist,” Felicity said.

“You sure of that?”

She shrugged.

“Could be our vigilante’s got himself a partner,” Lance suggested.

“The same two at Russo’s  _and_ here?” she asked. “That’s a big leap, assuming the Hood would even bother teaming up with someone who can barely shoot straight.”

“Eh, you may be right.” Lance scrubbed a hand over the back of his head, ruffling up his hair. “I can’t really see the Hood letting Salvati get the drop on him. Subtle, Salvati was not.”

The Batman theme began to echo in the large space, the dark and brooding tones from the Michael Keaton movie, heavy on the strings. Felicity whipped out her phone and hit the ignore button, but she wasn’t fast enough to escape Lance’s notice.

“I know, I know,” she said, dropping the phone back in her pocket. “Customized ringtones aren’t exactly professional.”

“Who gets Batman?” the detective asked, sounding a little envious. “Your dad?”

Felicity choked on a bitter laugh. “My father gets the sound of silence, and I don’t mean the Simon and Garfunkel song. He took off when I was little,” she explained.

“Sorry,” Lance muttered.

“Nothing to be sorry for,” she replied. “I barely remember him.”

“Well, he’s an idiot anyway for leaving you and your mom.”

Her laugh was genuine this time. “Have you  _met_ my mom? I almost don’t blame him, sometimes.”

“Still. Everyone needs their dad.” His hand rose like he was going to give her shoulder a fatherly squeeze or something. He stared at it, then let his arm fall back to his side. “Let’s get out of here so the coroner can do his thing.”

Getting out of there meant heading into the department to start working the case. But Felicity needed to check the progress of the search running on her tablet. And she’d have to do something about that phone call, because the Batman ringtone was assigned to Oliver Queen’s number.

As Felicity left the warehouse, her phone buzzed, this time with a text message from Oliver.

_Can we talk?_

Glancing around, making sure no one could see the screen, she deleted the text and rushed to her car. With a squeal of tires, she fled the Glades.

Felicity pulled into the brightly lit parking lot in front of police headquarters. Employees didn’t typically park there, but it felt safe, and she needed the extra light.

A quick check of her tablet told her the search was still running, but the app had come up with one item of note, a report from a police station in Hong Kong. Felicity skimmed the contents, knowing Lance would be waiting for her inside.

Tommy Merlyn had gone to Hong Kong, it seemed. The report was vague, and the story Tommy gave was confusing, like he had revised it as he was telling it. He may or may not have gotten an e-mail from Oliver two years after the  _Queen’s Gambit_ had gone down, saying that Oliver was alive and in Hong Kong. But then Tommy had backtracked, saying something about coming out there for a vacation, and there was a kidnapping, or a kidnapping attempt. Whoever had talked to Tommy hadn’t been able to straighten out his story.

A soft click sounded, the app’s signal that it had uncovered another piece of information. Felicity tapped on the screen. A picture of Oliver Queen, a recent paparazzi snap, was side by side with a close-up photo of the Hood. The picture of the vigilante was black and white, so it had probably come from some kind of security footage, maybe from one of the banks the Hood had showed up at when the Royal Flush Gang was in town. Facial recognition was one of the side functions built into the app, which confirmed what Felicity’s eyes had refused to. Oliver Queen was the Hood.

* * *

 

“Thank you for being discreet,” he’d said.

After Oliver closed the door behind her, he walked back into the living room, wishing he’d said more. But what? He thanked Felicity every time she helped him. He’d apologized more than once for his secrets coming between her and her partner. Yet it didn’t seem like enough.

Then Thea had come in, apologizing for the way she’d come down on him at the hospital. She must have had a talk with Mom, because she tossed out a few un-Thea-like words. What she said had stuck with him, though, that he should share his secrets with someone.

Oliver took a deep breath and let it out. Thea had no idea how awful some of his secrets were. They were dark, festering things that he tried to keep hidden away, but they kept reaching fingers out to touch different parts of his life. It was getting harder to compartmentalize, and it was very, very lonely.

He took out his phone and scrolled through the list of contacts. Her picture made him smile. He’d snapped it the first time they’d met, just before he’d left her office. Felicity’s pink shirt contrasted with her bright red lips, and the expression on her face said that she wasn’t buying his dumb excuses.

Oliver tapped on her picture and opened a new text message.  _Can we talk?_ he typed. Then he waited. And waited. The longer he waited for a response, the more it seemed like a bad idea. Felicity Smoak was the first person since he came back who had accepted him for who he was. For whatever reason, she trusted him. He couldn’t bring the darkness within him to her door.

So he went to another door, and let himself in. And waited.

“I’d ask how you got in here,” Helena said, her smooth voice soothing something restless inside him, “but the Starling City vigilante comes and goes as he pleases. Doesn’t he?”


	18. Shady Characters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Felicity encounters a shady character or two.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bless you, readers, for sticking with me. I know it's been a long time, but I promise you I am committed to this story. I am also committed to my life outside of this story, and sometimes stuff just comes up. Thanks for waiting patiently and not bugging me. I really appreciate it. So here's a nice long chapter with a juicy flashback that covers something I've been DYING to write about. :P

**Chapter 18—Shady Characters**

A knock on the driver’s side window made Felicity jump. Detective Lance. She lowered the window.

“How long you been parked here, Smoak?”

“I don’t know,” Felicity admitted.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

The reply was automatic, years of conditioned, hollow responses to people who were only asking to be polite, not because they wanted an honest answer.

But Lance, it seemed, wasn’t asking to be polite. He walked around the front of the car (which he did in about two strides) and got in on the passenger side. He folded his legs so that his chin could almost rest on his knees.

“Something’s got you rattled,” he said. “What did Queen say to you?”

“Nothing,” she said too quickly.

Detective Lance’s eyebrows grazed his hairline.

“Nothing to do with the case.” Felicity looked down at her hands, still clenched on the steering wheel.

“Smoak, the Queens chew people up and spit out the bones,” said Lance. “It’s what they do. I wish I could arrest ‘em all just for that, but being soul-sucking, two-faced . . . Well, it’s not against the law. All I can do is warn people off.”

“You already did,” Felicity pointed out.

“That was a nudge. This is a warning. Next time . . . There shouldn’t  _be_ a next time.”

Felicity let go of the steering wheel and let her hands fall in her lap. “I can take care of myself.”

“I’m sure you can. You wouldn’t have made detective otherwise.”

“I’m not your daughter. I’m your partner.” She stole a sideways glance at him. He was staring straight ahead. “You warned me, I listened, and it’s done.”

Detective Lance opened the door and unfolded his legs.

“I’m an adult,” Felicity continued. “I have been for a while. And I’m not afraid of Oliver Queen.”

Lance grunted something that might have been assent or just an acknowledgment that the conversation was over, then got out of the car. He started to close the door but leaned his head back in.

“Maybe you should be,” he said.

Felicity watched him walk off and disappear into the building. She didn’t know what to do next—her thoughts were in such a tangle. She might be the only person who knew the identity of Starling City’s vigilante, besides the vigilante himself.

Oliver Queen. She had a hard time reconciling what she’d learned of him with what she knew about the vigilante. The Oliver Queen from her research was spoiled, entitled, a brat if ever there was one. The vigilante was a trained killer. And what about the Oliver Queen she’d been doing favors for? He was totally different.

Felicity rested her forehead on the steering wheel. She’d been doing  _favors_ for the  _vigilante_ . Had she contributed to people getting killed? The vigilante’s victims were all guilty of some really awful things, but he had no right to carry out a death sentence. And she certainly wasn’t about to help him commit murder.

She wasn’t stupid, either. She’d made the connections between the names Oliver had dropped, the cases she’d worked on, and what she saw on the news. But Felicity wasn’t able to wrap her fairly enormous brain around it until the incontrovertible truth stared her in the face. Or his face. Or his face staring back at hers . . . Whatever. There was a lot of staring.

And what about the rest of those recent revelations? The vigilante following the mysterious motorcyclist out of Russo’s. That accidental text she’d received, Oliver wanting to talk to his bodyguard about Helena Bertinelli. Frank Bertinelli’s dead associates. How self-destructive could one person be, getting involved with a mobster’s daughter  _and_ suiting up every night to take on the city’s criminal elite?

“I need a drink,” she said out loud.

Felicity couldn’t bear to return to the squad room. She texted Lance something bullshitty about cramps that she hoped would discourage him from asking any questions, and then she headed home. She needed her cat, and a glass or two of wine, and maybe the smoked mozzarella in her fridge that she’d been saving for just such an occasion.

No sooner had she settled on the couch with her wine and cheese, then there was a knock at the door. Highly annoyed at the interruption, she jumped up and flung it open, assuming Detective Lance was dropping by with another gloomy, pointed warning about all things Queen. The lean, craggy older man on her front stoop arched an eyebrow.

“You’re not Detective Lance,” she blurted out.

“I am not,” the man said. “Josiah Hudson. And you, I assume, are Felicity Smoak.”

“I am. Is there something I can help you with?”

Hudson looked her up and down. “You might want to have this conversation inside.”

“Because I’m wearing pajamas? I don’t care.”

But she did care a little bit. Her shirt was printed with a graphed parabola and the words “I want you to be tangent to my curves,” and it was a little cold to be outside wearing sleep shorts.

“I don’t let random strangers in my home,” Felicity said, “even ones who know my name.”

“Fair enough.”

He reached into his inside jacket pocket, and she wished she hadn’t already unloaded and locked up her gun for the night. But he pulled out, not a weapon, but a book. A little leather-bound book that looked more like a journal.

“Your research skills come highly recommended,” said Hudson. “My employer would like you to find out everything you can about this book.”

He’d moved forward, crowding her in the doorway. Reflexively, she took a step back. Now they were in her house.

Felicity really didn’t want to touch him, but she also really didn’t want him in her own space. So she pushed him back. Not a shove—just hard enough to send a message.

“If you know my name and address, then you know I’m a cop,” she said.

“I do,” Hudson admitted. “I also know about your college boyfriend, your ability to count cards, and the real reason you left SCPD’s Internal Affairs office.”

Felicity tried to maintain a poker face, but her fingernails were digging into her palms. Those were things only she and her mother knew, and she hadn’t even told her mom the truth about her move to Major Crimes.

“My employer expects me to be thorough, Miss Smoak.”

“Then why come to me?” Felicity asked. “I’m nobody.”

Josiah Hudson smiled. It was creepy.

“You and I both know that’s not true,” he said. “My employer will be in touch.” He turned to go. “Miss Smoak? Cop to cop, you should know better. That door has a peephole. Use it.”

Felicity stared after him, open-mouthed. He faded into the darkness of almost-midnight, and then she heard a car somewhere in the distance start up and drive away.

She blew out a breath. “Okay, that was incredibly weird.”

Felicity closed the door. Maybe it was time to buy that security camera setup she’d been eyeing at Tech Village. As she reached out to engage the locks, she saw the tiny book clasped in her hand. Josiah Hudson had somehow slipped it to her without her noticing.

“Creep,” she muttered, locking the door and returning to the living room.

Jpeg didn’t even twitch as she flopped down on the couch next to him. She picked up her wineglass and took a big gulp, tossing the book onto the coffee table.

“I am done doing people’s dirty work,” she said to the cat.

Her willpower lasted about twenty seconds. She might have been able to hold out longer, but her stomach growled. She reached for the cheese and the little book at the same time.

“Who am I kidding? I love getting my hands dirty . . . with research,” she added, in case Jpeg was listening. “Just dirty, dirty research.”

Jpeg opened one eye. Felicity could feel him judging her.

“I didn’t mean  _dirty_ research,” she said to him, breaking off a chunk of cheese. “I mean I can’t resist it. Research, not dirty stuff. Oh my God, I can’t even talk to  _you_ like a normal person. You shouldn’t be letting me out of the house to interact with people.”

Felicity flipped through the book quickly, and then once more, slower. Then she went through it again, page by page. All blank.

It almost looked handmade, but the paper was cut uniformly and no threads were visible. The cover was leather but plain, no tool marks or stitching. There was nothing distinctive about the book.

So why would this spooky Josiah Hudson guy be so cloak-and-dagger about an empty book?

Josiah Hudson. That was a place to start.

It was disappointing how easy he was to find. She’d have though the head of security for Queen Consolidated would try a little harder to stay under the radar. But his name and photo were listed on the company website for all to see. The executives all had professional photos reminiscent of actors’ headshots. Hudson’s looked like someone scanned in his company ID after failing to convince him to pose.

Now who had he meant when he talked about his employer? No one by the name of Queen was actually involved with the company anymore. Walter Steele, Chief Financial Officer, stepped in when Robert Queen’s yacht disappeared. When it became apparent that there was no hope for his safe return, the board made Steele CEO. He had the decency to wait until Robert Queen was declared dead before marrying Moira Queen, though. Was Steele the nameless employer?

More cyber-digging and a few phone calls later, she learned that Josiah Hudson was not responsible to the board. He reported directly to Walter Steele and no one else. Steele was the one who’d told his security director to be thorough. Steele wanted to know everything that could be found out about the little book on her coffee table.

Felicity decided to confront Walter Steele at his office on Monday. She did not expect to be summoned by phone on Sunday afternoon. She knew the police chief and the DA were frequent dinner guests of Walter Steele and his wife. Turning down the summons was not an option if she wanted to keep her job.

She dressed in work clothes, a blue button-down and a striped skirt she hadn’t been able to wear since making detective, since it was a little short for chasing down perps and crouching over bodies at crime scenes. She traded her fuzzy socks for black heels and smoothed her unruly curls into a ponytail. After slipping the book into her purse, she headed out the door and made the drive to the skyscraper in the heart of downtown Starling City.

Parking was a pain in the ass. The business district ought to have been deserted on Sunday, but all the spaces were filled with Mercedes and high-end SUVs. She ended up parking illegally, knowing she could wipe a ticket from the system.

Felicity was early. After checking in and clipping a visitor badge to her coat, she did a little exploring because she had an idea. The building was quiet, but she managed to get on the elevator with a woman who directed her to the Applied Sciences division. Dropping Walter Steele’s name and flashing her other badge got her what she needed.

She walked into Walter Steele’s office with her arms full. Without ceremony, she dumped everything on his desk and retraced her steps to flip the light switch. The room plunged into near darkness.

“What are you doing?” His voice was deep, his British accent rich.

“It needs to be dark in here if we’re going to do this,” Felicity said. A blush flared up her neck. “If I’d had more time to think of that sentence, it wouldn’t have sounded so dirty. Look.” She pushed the book toward him.

He flipped through the blank pages. “I don’t see anything.”

“I got these from Applied Sciences.” She handed him a pair of safety glasses and put on a pair of her own. “They’re able to pick up the sub-visible variations in the UV spectrum.”

Steele put on the glasses. Felicity turned on a handheld UV light and shone it on the journal. “Now look at the book again.”

The soft blue-purple light revealed handwriting on the page. It was a list of names. They both took off the safety glasses, and Felicity turned the overhead light back on.

Steele sat back. “I haven’t even told you why I wanted to see you, Miss Smoak. Though I do appreciate you humoring me on your day off.”

She shrugged. “Josiah Hudson showed up on my doorstep with that book. All roads led back to you, Mr. Steele. Well, one road, really. Neither of you is very good at being covert.”

Steele leaned forward, hands clasped in front of him. “Miss Smoak—”

“Felicity.”

“Felicity. I realize you work for the Starling City Police and are outside my employ, and that I come to you for a favor. Your skills as a researcher, however, come highly recommended from sources both within and without the police department. So I asked Josiah to deliver the book to you and engage your services. He died this morning under questionable circumstances.”

Felicity blinked. “Questionable?”

“I believe he was murdered.”

“By who?” she asked.

“Whoever wants to keep these names invisible.” He closed the book. “I want to hire you as a consultant. I’d like you to find out all you can about this, but you must understand what I may be asking of you. This mystery . . . Are you sure you want to do this?”

Felicity wrapped her arms around her middle. A man was dead. A creepy man, but still. He had been in her home, he had asked for her help, and now he was dead. There was only one answer to Mr. Steele’s question.

“I hate mysteries,” she said. “They bug me. They need to be solved.”

“Very well,” said Mr. Steele. “Then that will be all, Miss Smoak.”

She wasn’t his employee—she didn’t like being dismissed. But she held her tongue for once, gathering up the borrowed equipment. She wasn’t about to cop an attitude with someone so close to her boss. And he  _had_ given her a tantalizing puzzle to work out.

Felicity returned everything to Applied Sciences, lingering a few moments to catch a glimpse of what they might be working on, but there wasn’t much to see.

On Monday, the squad room was abuzz with the excitement of what had gone down over the weekend. As the newbie, Felicity had been left out of the loop, and she’d been too busy with the vigilante and the book to turn on the news. Detective Lance took her out to Big Belly Burgers for lunch to make up for not calling her.

“So first, this fairly small-time fish, Anthony Venza, gets taken down,” said Lance while they waited for their food. “He sold prescription pills, and turns out he’s on Frank Bertinelli’s payroll.”

“Interesting,” Felicity commented.

She sneaked a peek over her partner’s shoulder. Oliver Queen was in the next booth facing her, looking glum and tired. She didn’t think Lance had seen him—he would have said something cutting by now.

“No body count this time,” Lance continued. “Venza lawyered up right away, but his flunkies all had the same story. Guy in a green hood, and some scary woman with a crossbow.”

“ _What_ ?” Her sharp tone caused Oliver to glance up. She lowered her voice. “The vigilante has a partner?”

Lance sat back as their waitress set their plates down on the table. “Looks that way,” he said. “Then the top leadership of the Triad gets taken out. Only one guy’s left alive, with a bullet in his leg. And he describes a scary woman wearing a mask who told him Frank Bertinelli sends his regards.”

“She’s trying to turn them on each other, isn’t she?”

“Oh, it’s already happened,” said Lance, slopping a French fry into the puddle of ketchup on his plate. “Where have you been?”

When he looked up, Felicity gave him her fiercest glare. But the sting was taken out of it by the sight of Oliver over Lance’s shoulder. His face wasn’t smiling, but his eyes had a definite twinkle when they met hers. She shook her head a little—for a moment she’d forgotten who she was talking to and why she was mad.

“I’ve been left hanging by my so-called partner, is where I’ve been,” she retorted, dragging her eyes away from Oliver and focusing back on Detective Lance.

A flicker of hurt flashed in the gruff man’s eyes. The “so-called partner” comment was a dig, sure, but he kind of deserved it for not even telling her any of this until now.

“So what else did I miss?” Felicity asked. She used a fork to dig into her cheese fries. “I know there’s more, because I heard the man himself is in custody.”

Lance shook his head. “All that work, and some rookie in a uniform gets the collar.”

Felicity sensed movement and spared a glance at Oliver. He’d leaned forward. The better to eavesdrop, probably.

“They won’t make a rookie detective over this, will they?” She was a little worried. As far as she was concerned, there was only room for one upstart young detective in Major Crimes.

Lance smiled. “No one’s gonna pin a gold shield on him just because he happened across Frank Bertinelli laying unconscious in his front yard.”

He began to tell her the story behind the arrest, but she’d already heard some of it in the squad room, and she was distracted by Oliver. His bodyguard slid into the booth across from him, blocking her view. Damn.

“Chili cheese fries with jalapeños,” Mr. Diggle said. “That’s a cry for help if I’ve ever seen one.”

Felicity covered her snort with a massive bite of cheese fries, which led to a coughing fit, which led to her gulping down half her soda.

The rest of Oliver and Mr. Diggle’s conversation was lost to her until she was sliding out of the booth to leave. Her heart gave a painful little twist at the bodyguard’s words.

“You know, Oliver, I’m no expert at this, but I don’t think love is about changing or saving a person. I think it’s about finding the person who’s already the right fit.”

As she buttoned her coat, biting her lip, she could feel Oliver’s gaze on her. She refused to look up. Somehow she made it out of the diner without the hot tears she was fighting back spilling over.

If Detective Lance noticed Felicity was visibly upset when she got into the car, he didn’t say anything. She stared out the window as they drove back to SCPD, thinking about Cooper Seldon, her first love, the last person she’d tried (and failed) to save.

 

* * *

 

7 YEARS EARLIER

A sharp pain lanced through her finger. Felicity looked down. She had been biting her nails, and she’d just drawn blood. She wiped it on her jeans. Her black polish was mostly chipped off. The courthouse opened at eight, and she was first inside after sitting in the IHOP across the street for four hours. In the restaurant, she’d picked at her fingernails, trying to ignore the smells of syrup and fresh coffee that were making her already nervous stomach swoop and roll.

She had paced inside the courthouse until her legs were tired, and now she was sitting on a bench. The only people she’d seen so far were clerks and judges. Not a single cop, and definitely no prisoners. Where the hell was he?

Sneaking around the bustling hallways wouldn’t work. With her purple-streaked hair, black clothes and heavy eye make-up, she looked more like a criminal than an employee.

“I’m seriously starting to see the disadvantages of the Goth look,” she muttered.

She approached four different people before she could get anyone to look her in the eye, and two more simply shrugged when she asked when federal prisoners would be arraigned. Since asking nicely was getting her nowhere, she decided the city of Boston deserved whatever it got. She was going to hack the system.

Felicity zipped up her hoodie and gathered her long dark hair into a ponytail. In a bathroom on the third floor, she scrubbed at her face with hand soap and wet paper towels until all the eyeliner was gone and her skin was pink and tender. It would have to be enough. There was nothing she could do about her clothes, or the fact that she hadn’t showered in a few days.

She spotted a pair of reading glasses on the counter by the sinks. Someone must have taken them off and forgotten about them. She put them on. Combined with her contacts, they made her vision all swimmy, but she didn’t need them to see. She needed them to look vulnerable, like a non-threat.

The first networked computer she found that wasn’t in a high-traffic area was down in Archives, off a dim, spooky corridor in the basement. Everything looked kind of dusty. Maybe the archivist was on vacation.

“It’d be nice to catch a break right about now,” she said to herself as she decrypted the computer’s password.

From there it was easy to look up the court docket. Federal arraignments weren’t scheduled until the afternoon. Two names were listed, neither of them Cooper’s.

“Damn.”

Why the delay? Cooper’s public defender ought to be raising a stink about it, but Felicity had met him briefly when she’d gone to the jail two days ago. She wasn’t overly impressed.

Piggybacking off the network, Felicity used an old hack to get into the police department’s secure database. The first thing she’d done when she got to MIT was to hack the police department and campus security, writing her own back doors into the code, just in case. Now she used that back door to run a search for any mention of Cooper Seldon.

All the files were time- and data-stamped, most recent first. So she found it right away, read it twice without the borrowed glasses, and then vomited in a trashcan she hastily pulled out from under the desk. Somehow she erased her tracks and logged out of the system. Somehow she made it out of the building without attracting any attention. Then she sank to the curb and cried.

She cried until her eyes burned and her head pounded, until her sleeves were soaked with tears and snot. Red-eyed and hollowed out, she took a bus back toward campus, staring out the window. Felicity could still see the words behind her eyes.

_Seldon, Cooper. Deceased. Suicide._

It had happened in the middle of the night. Sometime when she was pacing in the dorms before heading downtown, Cooper had chosen death over federal prison. Of course no one told her. Cooper had done everything he could to keep her out of it. All the waiting, all the skulking around, and that whole time he was laying on a metal table in the morgue. She swallowed hard against the burn of bile rising in her throat.

Felicity got off the bus on a street near the campus and walked a couple of blocks to a drugstore. After making her purchases, she walked a few more blocks to Cooper’s dorm. No one stopped to talk to her, but no one usually did. She had few friends to begin with, and her world had pretty much shrunk down to Copper and his roommate, Myron. And Myron didn’t like her very much.

She’d practically been living in Cooper’s dorm room for the last few weeks, and a lot of her stuff was there, but she stopped at her own dorm first. She’d hacked the system ages ago and made herself a keycard for Cooper’s dorm. When she entered his and Myron’s room, it was empty. Myron had class, and Cooper was . . . She couldn’t finish that thought.

The room was a mess. The feds had been all over it, searching through Cooper’s belongings and seizing his computer. Felicity went into the bathroom and took out her contacts. That way she wouldn’t be able to see anything of Cooper’s. Then she tackled her hair. It was the longest it had ever been, and she used up an hour and two boxes of dye. The peroxide made her eyes water. While the dye set, she cleaned up and then went through her make-up, getting rid of the liquid eyeliner and the black and purple lipsticks.

Felicity left her dark clothes in a pile on the floor and stepped into the shower to rinse her hair. A lump formed in her throat, but she bit her lip and refused to cry. No more crying. Tears didn’t change anything.

Wet hair dripping down her bare back, she shoved her discarded clothes in the same trash bag as the boxes and gloves and hair dye bottles. She used Myron’s blow dryer and then dressed in clothes she hadn’t worn since her freshman year, a twirly, knee-length skirt and a gray sweater over a white button-down patterned with tiny flamingos.

Foundation covered her blotchy skin and puffy eyes. She painted her lips with the only color she had left, a tube of bright pink lipstick that was old enough to be a little cakey. Her hand shook as she applied it, being careful not to meet her own eyes in the mirror.

She stepped into a pair of heels and then, as the final touch, she put on her own pair of glasses, daring to gaze at her reflection. Her hair, in a ponytail again, was now a wheaty shade of gold, and the square-framed glasses, a pair she only kept around for the times her contacts acted up after long nights of coding, somehow made her look both younger and more serious.

When she exited the bathroom, trash bag in hand, Myron was perched on the edge of Cooper’s bed. His eyes were a little teary, but they widened when he saw Felicity.

“What the hell?”

She tossed the trash bag on the stripped twin mattress. Her duplicate keycard was inside it, as well as the silver ankh necklace Cooper had given her. He’d commented more than once that she looked like Death from the Sandman graphic novels—“only hotter”—and the ankh was all she needed to complete the look.

“I don’t need that anymore.” She indicated the trash bag with a tilt of her head. “This is me now.”


	19. Somewhere Else, Not Here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Felicity has an attack of the Christmas spirit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a little overdue--and that is why I've never made public what my new posting schedule is, because I knew I'd have to break it at least once. It's a little cliffhanger-y, but it was a good spot length-wise to end the chapter. And it was a fun one to write, even though it took ages. Thanks for continuing to hang in there with me! (The chapter title is a somewhat obscure reference--ALL the virtual cookies to anyone who figures it out!)

 

Christmas was coming. Felicity was excited. Even though she was Jewish, she loved the lights, the food, and the cheesy Hallmark movies. Since Christmas was a busy time in Vegas, her mom always had to work when she was a kid, so instead they’d go all out for Hanukkah.

Felicity had a small menorah at home. She’d lit the candles and said her prayers. She’d used Amazon to send her mom a gift each day, and then laughed when Mom sent her a box with all eight presents at once. Now Hanukkah was over, and Christmas approached. She bought a tiny tree made of purple tinsel, just because she could, bedecked it with lights, and set it on the kitchen counter.

For a few days, she tried to put thoughts of the Hood and Oliver Queen out of her head. She ate peppermint ice cream. She left handfuls of red- and green-wrapped chocolates on every desk in the squad room. She hummed Christmas carols at home while she baked snickerdoodles and pumpkin bread. On a stakeout, she plugged her iPod into the SUV’s speakers and played her extensive Christmas playlist at a low volume until Detective Lance declared he couldn’t be held responsible for his actions if he heard one more version of “Winter Wonderland.”

Then Walter Steele called, wanting to know what kind of progress she’d made on researching the names in the book. Felicity confessed she’d put it off while she got into the Christmas spirit.

So, as December wound down, she spent her evenings on the couch with her tablet, looking up the list of names one by one while movies with titles like  _A New Mommy for Christmas_ and  _Silver Belle of the Yule Ball_ played on TV in the background.

Felicity began to see a trend in her research, an interesting point of commonality. When she had enough evidence to be sure, she picked up her phone and called Mr. Steele’s cell number. She could hear voices in the background as he answered.

“I’m in the middle of a dinner party, Miss Smoak, so I hope this is of some importance.”

_Wow, that was kind of frosty_ . She checked the clock.  _Who has a dinner party on a Wednesday night?_

“I guess that depends on how you define ‘important,’” Felicity snarked back. “See, most people would consider finding a list of names written in ultraviolet invisible ink important.”

“But I already know that, don’t I?” said Mr. Steele.

“Did you know seven names on the list are guys the vigilante’s had in his crosshairs? That is, if bows had crosshairs. Which they don’t.”

“But it is a rather long list, Felicity, so I would expect there to be some overlap.” His accent was so crisp, like celery.

She glanced at the list of seven names on her tablet. “Like Doug Miller.”

“Head of Applied Sciences at Queen Consolidated. What of him?”

“Mr. Miller may end up getting an arrow in his stocking because he’s on the list,” said Felicity. “So . . . important or not?”

Mr. Steele thanked her for the information and ended the call. He gave no indication of what he’d do with that information, which led her to wonder . . . Should she say something to Oliver? No, she’d be breaking Walter’s confidence by telling Oliver about the list.

Her phone buzzed, indicating that someone had left a voice mail while she was on the call with Walter. She let it play.

“Lance here.”

If Mr. Steele’s voice was like caramel, Detective Lance’s was like sandpaper.

“On my way to a scene. You need to meet me there.” He recited an address, which she memorized. “It’s Adam Hunt.”

Of course she recognized the name. Adam Hunt was on the list.

The list. It seemed to merit capitalization now.  _The List_ .

Felicity put on a sweater over her pajama top and traded the bottoms for a pair of jeans. She shoved her feet into canvas sneakers, grabbed her keys, and headed out.

She arrived at the crime scene right after the police commissioner. Which was weird. A, because he got there first, and B, because there was no reason she knew of for him to be there. She flashed her badge at the officer guarding the door and then followed the entourage into the house.

If Detective Lance was surprised to see the commissioner, he didn’t show it. When Commissioner Nudocerdo demanded a report, Felicity stepped closer so she could hear.

“Well, the daughter came over, used her key, found Dad,” said Lance, indicating the body bristling with arrows that weren’t green. “Hat trick to the chest.”

“The hood guy,” the commissioner said.

“That’s what I thought at first, but these black arrows aren’t consistent with his M.O. And neither is the fact that the Hood took Hunt for forty million a few months ago. Doesn’t make sense to kill him now. Something doesn’t add up. We’re dealing with a copycat.”

That’s what Felicity thought too. The commissioner grumbled and stomped around for a bit and then left. Felicity worked the scene with Detective Lance, but there was little physical evidence other than the black arrows protruding from Hunt’s chest.

In the squad room the next morning, Felicity pushed back from her desk and rolled her head from side to side, trying to work out the kink in her neck. She’d been digging through Adam Hunt’s financial records for hours, and the first twinges of a migraine were pricking behind her eyes. The Christmas decorations caught her gaze, swags of red and silver tinsel hung high on the wall.

“Quentin Lance?”

Felicity looked up. A delivery driver stood between their desks, holding a small box. His face was red from the cold, and he smelled like fresh winter air.

“Yeah,” said Lance, getting up from his seat.

He signed for the package, then set the box on his desk and stared at it, hands in his pockets. She got up and joined him.

“It’s been through X-ray,” she pointed out. Lance said nothing, so she went on. “Nothing raised any red flags, or else it wouldn’t be here. But I guess we could call the bomb squad just to be safe.”

Quentin Lance was not an eye-roller, but he did have a very specific look that Felicity had begun to recognize, a look that said,  _That is so ridiculous, it doesn’t even deserve a response_ . He gave her the look and then tore open the box.

It was a phone. Felicity recognized the model—low-end, probably a burner phone. Lance just stared at it.

“Who sent it?” she asked. “Do you have an informant who’s really paranoid or something?”

The phone buzzed, causing them both to jump. Lance glanced at Felicity, then swiped the screen to accept the call and put it on speaker.

“Lance,” he said.

“I didn’t kill Adam Hunt.” The voice on the other end was growly and electronically disguised, and she recognized it immediately.

So did Lance. “ _You_ .”

“You call me ‘the Hood.’ It’s not a great nickname.”

Felicity bit her lip to keep from letting Oliver’s name slip out.

“You told Commissioner Nudocerdo that you might be dealing with a copycat, another archer, which makes me your best bet to take him down. But I need your help. I need one of the arrows from his murder.”

Lance looked at Felicity and raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, we’re pretty good at pulling down leads off our own evidence. It’s kind of our thing.”

“Not like I am,” said the Hood. “I can do things the police can’t, go places they won’t.”

Lance shook his head. “Like I said, I don’t even know who—”

“If this archer doesn’t stop with Adam Hunt, we both have a problem. Think about it. Then call me. The number’s programmed in.”

When the call ended, Detective Lance used a pen to push the phone toward Felicity. “Do your thing,” he said. “Take it apart if you have to.”

She pulled a tissue from the box on his desk and used it to pick up the phone. “What are you going to do?”

“Figure out how the hell the Hood was close enough to overhear our conversation last night without being detected.”

“Oh . . . How creative do you want me to get with this?” she asked, holding up the phone in the tissue.

"Find out whatever you can,” said Lance. “I don’t want to know how you do it.”

A few days later, the Dark Archer struck again. Felicity stomped up the sidewalk to the scene, grumbling the whole way.

“Why can’t this ever happen during regular working hours when I’m dressed like a grown-up? Why does it always have to ruin my evening? Doesn’t anyone get murdered in broad daylight anymore?”

This time she arrived before the commissioner. Detective Lance had warned her that the big boss would probably show up again, so she hurried even more than usual. What was his deal anyway, suddenly visiting crime scenes? She had half a mind to hack his computer for answers, but she had her hands full with the phone from the Hood.

Under orders from Detective Lance, she kept her mouth shut and tried to fade into the background. Not an easy feat, considering her less than professional ensemble of dark gray yoga pants and a blue hoodie with frayed, ratty cuffs. At least she had it mostly covered up by her cute red coat.

“Commissioner, this is Nelson Ravich,” said Lance, indicating the arrow-studded body.

_Déjà vu_ , Felicity thought.

“The Hood hit him earlier this week. Ravich wired back the money he embezzled less than five minutes later.”

Felicity’s phone buzzed in the front pocket of her hoodie, vibrating against her stomach. She slipped it out just far enough to read the incoming text.

_Queen family Xmas party_ , it read.  _You’re invited._

She fought down a smile, turning her attention back to the conversation in front of her.

“All right,” the commissioner began, “we tell the press the Hood did this. Hunt’s murder is a page-ten story at best, but Ravich makes this a serial murder case. We can’t let the public get wind of the idea that there are  _two_ of these nutjobs running around.”

Of course all he’d think about was how things would look to the media. Of course. Felicity took a step forward and opened her mouth, but her partner silenced her with a look.

“You want me to ignore a serial killer?” he asked the commissioner.

Nudocerdo shook his head. “Just catch one of these psychos. I don’t care which one.”

Lance scoffed. He had it down to an art form.

“That is a direct order from your commanding officer,” said the commissioner, his voice hard.

“Well, you can forget it, then.”

“Fine, it’s forgotten,” Nudocerdo snapped.

He looked Felicity up and down, taking in her unprofessional attire. His gaze turned from scorn to hunger as it roved over her body. Bile rose in her throat. She hated how a man could make her feel like a piece of meat even when she was wearing her shlubbiest clothes.

“And you are both off this case, effective immediately.”

Detective Lance waited to speak to her until after the commissioner left.

“I could punch him if you want,” he said. “That’s gotta be sexual harassment.”

“Nah,” Felicity replied, shaking her head. “I have better ways to deal with that, ways that don’t involve either of us losing our jobs.”

“Let’s go. I have a call to make.”

As they drove back to the station in their separate vehicles, Lance filled her in on his plan over the phone.

“We’ll be going behind the commissioner’s back in a big way, so I understand if you don’t want to be involved,” he said. “You’re young, and you’ve got your whole career ahead of you.”

“We’re partners,” Felicity replied. “I’m in.”

Lance had decided that Felicity would handle the evidence while he called the Hood. He didn’t want her on the vigilante’s radar at all, but Felicity pointed out that it was probably moot. If the Hood had been close enough to the Adam Hunt crime scene to hear their conversation, he had to know Felicity was Detective Lance’s partner. Lance held firm, though, insisting that she’d look less likely to be up to something shady than he would. He let her listen while he made the call.

When the Hood’s weirdly distorted voice rose from the speaker, Felicity felt another pang of guilt for continuing to keep his identity secret.

“Don’t bother trying to trace this back to me. You’ll never break the encryption.”

“I wouldn’t say ‘never,’” Lance replied.

Felicity shook her head violently, motioning for him to shut up. The Hood didn’t need to know that Detective Lance had a tech expert in his corner, the same one that was in Oliver Queen’s corner. She was playing both sides, and she knew it would come back to bite her in the ass eventually.

“There’s a heating vent on the corner of O’Neil and Adams,” said Lance. “You’ll find what you’re after there.”

“It’d be a mistake to set a trap for me, Detective.”

“I’m trading away just about everything I believe in because it’s the only way I’ve got to get this bastard,” Lance snapped. “You’ve got till Christmas, and then, copycat or not, I’m coming after you.”

After the call ended, Felicity stood at the desk, clutching her purse. “You know I could find out more than he can,” she said to Lance.

“Yeah, probably,” Lance agreed. “But we need to keep our hands clean. Relatively,” he said with a pointed look at her purse. “You better run if you want to get in and out before he shows up.”

Felicity left a black arrow enclosed in an unmarked evidence bag inside the heating vent. Her face was hot, as if  _I am up to something_ was emblazoned across her forehead. Used to hiding her illegal activity behind a computer screen, she felt exposed.

When Felicity returned to the squad room, Detective Lance informed her that Lieutenant Pike had taken them out of the rotation for incoming cases, effectively benching them for the time being.

“Probably orders from high up,” said Lance. He raised his coffee cup. “Here’s to a few days of doing everyone else’s busywork.”

By lunchtime the next day, Felicity was bored out of her mind. When everyone else around her seemed occupied and Lance had gone on some errand, she slipped her tablet from her purse. She might be off the Dark Archer case officially, but she wasn’t going to let the Hood beat her to the evidence. After a few quick searches, she had what she wanted.

The Hood’s phone was in her purse. She hadn’t bothered breaking the encryption because it was about as secure as public bathroom, and because she already knew who the man under the hood was. Felicity sat in her car in the parking lot to make the call.

“Getting impatient, aren’t we, Detective?”

“Really impatient,” said Felicity. “I got tired of waiting for you to learn something I could figure out myself in less than ten minutes.”

“Then why bother giving me the arrow at all, Detective Smoak?” asked the Hood.

Felicity struggled to hear anything familiar of Oliver’s voice, but the device disguising it worked too well.

“My partner and I both want this guy caught,” she said. “But he has this thing about us not jeopardizing our careers, which I understand. He likes his job, he’s been doing it his whole life, and he wants to keep it. I, on the other hand, get calls and e-mails from recruiters for big tech companies every other week, and though I love putting criminals away, I’m not overly attached to this job. I have nothing to lose by getting more involved than Lance would like me to be.”

“So what do you have for me?”

“A few little tidbits about those arrows. Why is archery suddenly all the rage, anyway?” she asked. “It looks utterly ridiculous to me.”

The Hood made a noise that feel somewhere between a cough and a bark. Felicity chose not to comment and moved on.

“The arrowhead itself is homemade. Or home-ground. Is that what it’s called? It sounds like a coffee thing. Anyway, the shaft is custom-made but not homemade. The composite it’s made of is patented, and that patent is registered to a company called Sagittarius. That’s Latin for ‘the archer,’ which is so on-the-nose that I’d be rolling my eyes if you could see me.”

“Could you find out where and when the arrow was purchased?” asked the Hood.

“Could and did. That particular arrow was part of a bundle shipment. Two hundred units sent to a Starling City warehouse. The address is 10245 Wharf.”

“Detective Smoak, you are remarkable.”

Felicity pushed her glasses up on her nose. “Thank you for remarking on it.”

She returned to her desk in the squad room and opened the list she’d made on her tablet, names from the book that’d already been paid a visit by the Hood. Frank Bertinelli was in Iron Heights awaiting trial. So who might the Dark Archer target next?

“Hey.”

Felicity jumped. Oliver Queen stood at her desk.

“Don’t you knock?” she asked.

Oliver looked down at her with a bemused smile. “Felicity, this is the police department. It’s not the ladies’ room.”

“Right.” She forced a laugh, swiping at her tablet to close the current screen. “What can I do for you?”

He put his hands in his pockets. “I was in the area, and I wondered if you got my text last night.”

“Oh!” Felicity flipped the cover on her tablet closed and set it aside. “I couldn’t answer. I was at a crime scene. And then I’ve just been busy.” She put her head in her hand. “That sounds like such a lame excuse. It’s not typical behavior for me, I promise.”

His smile returned. “You don’t have to apologize.”

“It was a Christmas party invite, wasn’t it?”

Oliver nodded once. “It’s a family tradition that fell out of practice while I was away. And unfortunately my ex will be my best friend’s plus-once.”

“Ouch,” Felicity said with a wince.

“So I hoped I could talk you into coming.”

“As  _your_ plus-one?” she squeaked.

“As a favor. As my friend, I hope. Maybe as a buffer between me and . . . well, everyone else.”

His fingers drummed on her desk as she kept her eyes downcast, trying to get her blush under control. It wasn’t the first time she’d assumed something was a date when it really wasn’t.

Felicity studied him for a moment. If she suddenly started avoiding Oliver, he might begin to suspect her.

“Okay,” she said. “There’s a dress in my closet I haven’t had a chance to wear yet. And you’ll be wearing a tux, which is just . . .”

Her voice trailed off as she pictured it, his black sweater replaced by a dinner jacket, his gray shirt instead white with a black bow tied. Oh, God, was she drooling? Their eyes met and her face flamed again as Oliver’s smile widened.

“So . . . yes, I’d love to go to your party,” she said.

“Great! Here are the details.” He pulled an envelope from his jacket pocket and set it on top of her tablet. “I’m looking forward to seeing your dress.”

Felicity picked up the invitation. “And I’m really looking forward to seeing your arms—I mean your tux.” Neither of those sounded right, and she couldn’t think of a way to verbally dig herself out of that hole.

Oliver shook his head a little. His eyes said,  _You are an adorable creature_ . But all his mouth said was, “Merry Christmas.”

“I’m Jewish,” she blurted out, immediately wishing she could take it back. Could she be any more awkward?

“Happy Hanukkah, Felicity. See you tomorrow night.”


	20. Cute But Lethal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Felicity looks absolutely smashing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, Olicity dancing. I did write most of this while fully hopped up on cold meds. Just saying.

**Chapter 20—Cute But Lethal**

With no active cases, it was easy for Felicity to leave work early. Even so, she knew she’d still be pressed for time. She hadn’t been to a black-tie event since an awards banquet when she was nineteen.

The dress hung on the back of the bedroom door. She tried not to look at it, heading straight through to the bathroom to get in the shower. While she got ready, she drank nearly a liter of ginger ale to try to calm the nervous flutters in her stomach. And then she kept having to pee, so by the time she threw on her black coat and hustled out to her car, she’d be hard pressed to get to the Queen mansion on time.

It wasn’t a big, flashy party. There wasn’t a phalanx of security, just two guys in dark suits checking invitations, one of whom she recognized as Mr. Diggle. He smiled at her as she dug the invitation out of her purse and handed it to the other big guy with the scary arms.

“He’s looking for you,” said Mr. Diggle. “He just told me if you weren’t here in ten minutes, he was going to bolt.”

Felicity’s eyes lit up. “Well, if Oliver’s leaving, there’s no reason for me to stay.”

But as she spoke, Diggle’s hand was on her arm, and he was ushering her into the house, and a woman in a gray and white uniform was offering to take her coat while simultaneously peeling it off her shoulders. And then Diggle was whisking her past Walter Steele and Moira Queen (thank God), and she found herself standing in front of Oliver. Who was wearing a suit. A really well-tailored suit.

He wasn’t saying anything. Why wasn’t he saying anything? He was just looking at her, and suddenly she felt exposed, like she was living that recurring dream where she stood in front of a crowd without her clothes on.

“Hi,” Felicity said.

“Hey.”

His voice sounded weird, but she was immediately distracted from it by a handful of people standing off to the right. The women had on cocktail dresses, and the men wore suits. Not a tux in sight, and definitely no floor-length gowns.

“Oh, God, I’m overdressed. How am I overdressed? I thought—”

Oliver grasped her elbow. “You look amazing, Felicity.”

It  _was_ a great dress. It was one-shouldered, navy blue, and full-skirted. It swished when she walked. She loved it.

“Hey,” he said again, and she realized she’d been looking down. “It’s not just the dress.”

She couldn’t meet his eyes. “How’s it going so far?” She raised her hand to push up her glasses before remembering she was wearing contacts.

He let go of her elbow. “Well, my sister’s  _friend_ —” He emphasized the word with finger quotes. “—showed up with flowers for my mother, and then he and Thea disappeared. There’s some kind of tension between my mother and Walter, which made the family photo really awkward.”

“Sounds like you’ve gotten most of the rough stuff out of the way,” Felicity said.

“I wish. Tommy and Laurel aren’t even here yet.”

“Hey, man. Some party, huh?”

Felicity recognized Tommy’s voice before she turned around. He and Oliver did that bro hug where they slapped each other’s backs, and then Laurel and Oliver exchanged a stilted embrace, made even more awkward by Laurel’s boobs, which were very va-va-voomy in her red cocktail dress. Felicity had never before seen people try to hug without upper body contact, but they sure made an effort.

“So!” Tommy said, clapping his hands together. “How long do you think it’ll be till this isn’t weird?”

Oliver flashed a pained smile and then cupped her elbow, turning her away from them. She was about to blurt out something ridiculous about him having an elbow fetish when he murmured in her ear, his breath tickling her neck.

“Let’s dance.”

“To ‘Little Drummer Boy’?” she asked as he steered her to the middle of the room. “Is that even possible?”

“Consider it a challenge.”

And then his left hand was at her waist, and his right was clasping hers, and she stared at her other hand, not sure what to do with it. He huffed out a laugh, letting go of her waist for a moment to place her unoccupied hand on his shoulder.

“I get the feeling you don’t do this often,” said Oliver.

“Pretty much never,” Felicity admitted. “My kind of dancing involves closed blinds and pajamas, not Christmas music and formal wear.”

“Ah. Dance party for one?”

“Yeah. Unless you count Madonna. She’s usually in attendance. Musically, not actually. Classic black-lace-gloves Madonna, not fake-British-accent, leotard-cut-up-to-here Madonna. Are you just moving us in a circle?”

His lips curved up at her conversational whiplash. “Basically, yeah. There’s not much else you can do with ‘Little Drummer Boy.’”

They drifted past Tommy and Laurel, and he whipped around so fast, headed in the other direction, that she felt a little dizzy.

Felicity bit her lip. “You’re avoiding them.”

He drew her closer, tucking her head under his chin. “I told you I needed a buffer,” he murmured into her hair.

“There’s that, and then there’s running.” She could feel his heart beating under her ear. Was it just her imagination, or was it speeding up?

“Was it that obvious?”

“Announcing it on a Jumbotron would have been more subtle.” She drew back a little glanced past his shoulder to see Tommy whispering to Laurel, who was staring daggers at Oliver. “Look, I’m not an expert on your life or anything, but I think you should just get it over with. Talk to her. She obviously has something to get off her not-inconsiderable chest.”

He was smiling again. “You’re very smart.”

“Oh, please, I’m a freaking genius.”

He squeezed her hand in his, and that’s when she remembered. Those were killer hands. They’d shot arrows into hearts, stopping them instantly. She let go of him and stepped back.

Oliver looked like a confused puppy. A confused puppy who’d murdered in cold blood, Felicity reminded herself. A killer puppy.

“You mean I should go talk to her right now?” he asked.

“What?” She was rubbing her palms on her dress. It felt tainted now. “Oh. Yeah, go. I’ll just—” She looked around frantically. “I’ll just go make awkward small talk with Tommy.”

Oliver approached Laurel and asked if they could speak alone for a minute. Tommy said, “I’ll just go get us a couple of drinks. And drink them both.”

Felicity followed Tommy to the bar. True to his word, he asked for two vodka shots and downed them both. Felicity ordered a cocktail, and while it was being mixed, he tapped her bare shoulder.

“You clean up really well for a cop,” he said.

“And you clean up all right for a billionaire.”

He grinned. “That was a terrible comeback.”

“It was,” she agreed. “I’m off my game.”

He took her hand and spun her around in a quick pirouette. “If this is you off your game, I think every guy in this room is in trouble. But especially Oliver. He can’t stop talking about you.”

Felicity took a huge sip of her cocktail and then coughed. “What?”

“I mean, he doesn’t chatter on nonstop, because this is Ollie we’re talking about. Even before he was shipwrecked, he made brooding an art form,” Tommy continued. “But he drops your name into conversations oh-so-casually, but the whole time he’s making heart eyes. Kind of like right now.”

She sneaked a peek at Oliver and Laurel over the rim of her glass. Laurel was talking, and Oliver was nodding, but his focus was laser-trained on Felicity. When he caught her eye, he smiled. Her knees went all jibbly. Stupid knees.

Felicity set down her glass a little too hard, and bright liquid sloshed over the side. “I’m just going to go . . . check on Thea. She and her guy friend disappeared a while ago.”

Tommy laughed. “Three guesses what they’re up to. But you’re only going to need one.”

“Right. Where’s her room?”

“Third floor, second on the right. And that sounds really creepy that I know that, but I practically grew up here. It’s totally innocent, I promise,” he said, holding his hands up.

“Sure.” Felicity pushed past him and headed for the stairs, digging her fingernails into her palm to keep herself from turning to see if Oliver was watching her leave.

“Killer puppy,” she reminded herself under her breath. “Killer puppy. Cute but lethal. Don’t be stupid, Felicity.”

Because bursting in on Thea Queen with her dress bunched up at her waist and her half-naked friend with lipstick on his neck was  _such_ a brilliant idea.

“What the hell are you doing?” Thea demanded, setting her dress to rights.

“Your brother’s looking for you,” said Felicity, though it was total b.s. “He’s kind of upset that you ditched the party.”

“This whole thing was his stupid idea.” She threw the boy’s shirt at him, then pushed Felicity into the hall. “I didn’t want this. I told him it was a bad idea, but he didn’t care. He just wants to pretend like we’re a perfect little family, like the last five years didn’t happen.”

“I really doubt that.”

“Why am I even explaining this to you? You arrested him for murder. I don’t owe you anything.” She went back into the bedroom and slammed the door.

“It was—it was a mistake,” Felicity said feebly to the closed door. “Except it wasn’t, because he’s a killer puppy.”

Her phone buzzed. “Please be a case,” she muttered as she dug into her purse. “Please be a case. I have to get out of here.”

“Smoak. Get down here,” Lance growled.

“Where’s here?”

“An abandoned building in the Glades.” He rattled off an address. “This Dark Archer is pissed that the Hood’s getting credit for his kills. He’s taken hostages.”

“I’m—um—I’m not exactly dressed for hostage negotiation. And aren’t we supposed to be off this case?”

“You’ve showed up at crime scenes in your pajamas more times than I can count, and the commissioner called for all hands.”

“I’ll be there in fifteen,” Felicity replied, already pulling out her keys.

It took her almost half an hour to reach the building in the Glades because she wasted valuable time trying to find a way out of the Queen mansion that didn’t involve returning to the ballroom. In her blundering, she nearly stumbled onto Oliver and his ever-present bodyguard in a study or library or something, staring at a TV. She flattened herself against the wall near the half-open door, straining to hear.

The shaky voice of one of the hostages was reading a statement saying that a hostage would be killed every hour until the vigilante surrendered himself to the Dark Archer. Oliver and Diggle started to argue—confirmation that Mr. Diggle knew all about Oliver’s extracurricular activities.

“The killer puppy and the scary guy holding his leash,” she muttered, creeping away down the hall.

She’d left her coat at the Queens’ and it was freezing at the command site two blocks from the abandoned building. Someone handed her a windbreaker that said POLICE on it in huge letters. It didn’t do much to keep her warm, but it was better than nothing, and it made her look marginally more professional. Though she wasn’t going to last long in her four-inch heels.

“Bad news,” said Lance, wisely not commenting on her evening wear. “There are explosives all around the building. This guy doesn’t care if people get killed. It’s all about drawing in the Hood.”

“That should tell us something, shouldn’t it?” asked a junior officer. “That this copycat creep thinks the best way to draw out the Hood is to threaten innocent lives?”

“He’s a killer,” the commissioner barked. “They both are.”

The bomb tech cleared his throat, and everyone turned to him. “I count three thresholds, each wired via mercury switches to Semtex charges.”

“Can you defuse one for HRT to use as a breach point?” asked the commissioner.

“That’s going to take a while,” said Lance, “and then he’s gonna know which way we’re coming.”

“You got a better idea? Now would be a lovely time.”

Felicity’s gasp caused everyone to look up. She’d heard the  _zzzingg_ before anyone else, but they all watched, mouths agape, as the Hood ziplined down to the building and crashed through a window.

“Well, that—that changes things somewhat,” said the commissioner.

No one seemed to know what to do. After a few minutes, Lance snatched the radio right out of the bomb tech’s hands.

“Hostages. You got five hostages on the roof!” he shouted. “Repeat, five hostages on the roof!”

 

* * *

 

Oliver curled in on himself, his shoulder screaming in agony. He’d broken off the shafts, but the arrows were still in there, and they hurt like hell. It was getting hard to breathe. Where was Dig? The squeal of tires was the last thing he heard before he passed out.

“Don’t you look like hell.”

Oliver blinked. Dig stood over him. He slowly took in the softly beeping monitor, the hospital gown, the sight of his mother and Walter entering the room behind Dig. There was no time to talk about what had really happened. The cover story was a motorcycle accident. No one questioned why Oliver would leave the Christmas party that he’d insisted on in order to go joyriding on a freezing night.

He apologized to Thea, and then, when he and Dig were alone again, he asked about Felicity.

“She’s a cop, man. She got called to the hostage crisis. But not before I overheard her talking to herself.”

“So?” said Oliver. “She does that a lot. Talking is kind of her thing.”

“She called you a killer puppy. Cute but lethal.”

Oliver smiled.

“It’s not funny, Oliver,” Dig said. “I think she knows.”

“There’s no way.” But even as the words came out, they didn’t ring true. Everything she’d looked into for him . . . She was smart. Of course she’d make the connection.

“Really? She  _is_ a genius. If anyone could figure it out, I’d lay money on her.”

He sighed. It hurt—hell, just breathing normally hurt—but he pushed it aside for the moment. “I think we can trust her.”

“You think?”

“Dig, she could have turned me in by now. She could have told someone about the things I’ve asked her to do. But she hasn’t.”

“Because she could be named as an accomplice.”

The impact of what he’d done began to hit him. Oliver had thought he could just get Felicity to pass him information on the sly because of his good looks and charm. (He hadn’t missed the way she blushed to the roots of her hair whenever he caught her staring.) But if she was caught . . .

He shook his head, trying to rid himself of her image when she’d walked into the ballroom tonight. Stunning, outshining everyone else in the room. And then the look on her face when he’d squeezed her hand while they were dancing. It was like a switch had been flipped.

“Yeah, you’re right. I think she knows,” he said. “She can’t turn me in without implicating herself. And we have bigger problems. I think whoever compiled the list is a greater danger than the other archer.”

 

* * *

 

“Thank you, Felicity. It was good of you to call, but Oliver’s going to be fine. He’s already on the mend.”

“Good. I’m glad to hear it, sir.”

“I’m stepping into an elevator, so I’ll probably lose you. I’ll call you straight back.”

Felicity ended the call.  _Straight back_ . It was so British.

She tossed her phone on the couch. She shouldn’t care how Oliver was doing. He’d tangled with the Dark Archer and lost. It was everything he deserved for the people he killed.

_But what about all the hostages he saved?_ her traitorous mind responded.

It wasn’t fair. Why couldn’t everything just be black and white? Either people were all good, or they were all bad. That’s the way it should be. Could someone come back from being a killer? Had Oliver?

“Officer Smoak, you really should upgrade your alarm system. Anybody with half a brain could waltz right in.”

Felicity’s heart seized in her chest. That voice didn’t just make her skin crawl—it crept across the room and then shrieked in terror. It was a voice she’d hoped fervently that she’d never hear again.

She looked up. “Captain.”


	21. Worth It All

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Felicity kicks a little ass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for hanging in there with me! I hope this chapter is worth the wait. ;)

**Chapter 21--Worth It All**

“Captain.”

He wasn’t a creepy-looking man. THere was nothing about him that screamed “I am Felicity Smoak’s nemesis.” But he was in her home, uninvited, the man who was the primary reason she’d traded her safe job in front of a computer in Internal Affairs for standing over dead bodies with Detective Lance in Major Crimes.

“What brings you here? Without knocking?” Felicity asked.

She was trying to sound annoyed yet unconcerned, but her heart pounded so fast, she was afraid he’d see it through her pajama top.

“Four months, Smoak.” He took a step toward her, scrubbing a hand across his scalp. “Four months, and I don’t hear a word from you.”

“It’s called ‘burning bridges,’” said Felicity.

Captain Grifton moved fast, but she was quicker. She put herself between him and the end table where she kept her backup gun.

“I’d expect a little gratitude.”

“Gratitude?” she scoffed. “I liked my job. I loved my job. Sure, no one would talk to me because I was I.A., but I always preferred computers to people anyway. But because of you, I had to leave.” As she spoke, Felicity edged closer to the end table. “Now I look at dead bodies instead of data on screens, and I’m happy doing it because you’re not there.”

“You have to make everything difficult, don’t you?”

Grifton stepped right into her personal space and grasped her arms. It was exactly the wrong thing to do. Felicity kneed him in the groin. As he bent over in pain, releasing her arms, she hit him in the nose with the heel of her hand. It gave way with a satisfying crunch.

He was on his knees, clutching at his face. Without turning her back on him, Felicity opened the drawer and withdrew her gun. It was small, just a .22 designed for concealed carry, but it would do plenty of damage at close range.

“Get out,” she said, low and firm.

He got to his feet but couldn’t stand up straight, thanks to her groin shot.

“I said get out.” Keeping her gun trained on him, Felicity used her free hand to fling open the door. It smacked against the wall, revealing a confused Oliver Queen, his fist raised to knock.

Grifton scoffed, wiping his bloody nose on his sleeve. “Friends in high places, huh? Well, I’ve got friends too. You’ll lose your badge for this, Smoak.”

“And it’d be worth it. Tell _that_ to your friends,” Felicity spat.

He limped out, pushing past Oliver. Felicity clicked the safety back on and returned her gun to the end table. Wiping sweaty palms on her yoga pants, she looked up at Oliver.

“Come in, I guess. Make yourself at home,” she said shakily. “I’m going to go throw up or something.”

“Felicity--”

She turned her back on him and went into the kitchen. He followed her but didn’t speak as she braced her arms on the counter and stared into the sink for a minute. Then she burst into action, opening and closing cabinets, rummaging through them. She came up with a bottle of wine--red, mid-priced, nothing fancy--and poured a generous measure into the lumpy, melty-looking goblet she’d made on an ill-fated glassblowing tour in college.

“I’d offer you some, but you’d have to drink it out of a Star Trek mug.” She turned around.

“I can deal with Star Trek,” he said. He was smiling a little, but his eyes were full of concern.

Felicity poured more wine and handed him the mug. She gulped down a big swallow of her own before she began.

“I pulled some shady stunts in college,” she said. “Joining the SCPD was sort of my way of atoning for that. My degrees are in cyber-security and information technology, and the captain of Cybercrimes was falling all over himself to lure me to the department.

“I spent two years in Cybercrimes, drawing out pedophiles, which is just as much fun as it sounds. I took two showers a day, but there wasn’t enough hot water in the world to make me feel clean again. The day my transfer went through, I went down to the Glades and shoved my old uniform into some homeless guy’s trash barrel fire. Buying a new one was worth every penny.”

“And that guy was . . .,” Oliver prompted.

“My new boss when I transferred,” she said. “I was a tech specialist for Internal Affairs, and he offered to mentor me.” She laughed bitterly. “What he really meant was that he wanted to ogle my breasts and try to feel me up.”

“‘Try to’?”

Felicity nodded. “He never got anywhere. I made it a point to never be alone with him, and I talked a lot about all the martial arts classes I was taking.”

“Were you actually taking them?” Oliver asked.

“Oh, hell yeah. Mama Smoak didn’t raise no fool.” She grimaced. “Wow, that was a tragic grammar slip. But somehow it’s not the same without the double negative.” She slid onto one of the stools at the counter and took another healthy sip from her sad wineglass. “I stuck it out for a year. Worked my cute little butt off.”

His lips turned up at that.

“I did tech on cases for anyone who asked,” she continued. “And for people who didn’t. Anything that came into the department, I’d look into it and see if my services could be useful.”

“How did you get access to all of that?” The little wrinkle in the middle of his forehead that deepened whenever he was trying to figure something out was kind of adorable.

“Oh, please,” she said. “After everything I’ve done for you, you’re questioning my computer prowess?”

Oliver set down his Captain Spock mug and raised his hands in surrender.

“Anyway, I helped solve a lot of cases. The department’s clearance rate went way up, and word started getting around that I had something to do with it . . . What?”

He was fully smiling now. “Nothing. Just . . . You, the star of the SCPD.”

“Yeah. Hilarious,” she said sarcastically.

“It’s not hilarious. It’s--it doesn’t surprise me at all.”

He sipped his wine. Felicity didn’t understand why he looked more at ease standing in her kitchen, drinking cheap-ish red wine out of a Star Trek mug, than he did at the Christmas party in his own home, surrounded by family and friends.

“What does surprise me is that you put up with the harassment for so long,” Oliver said. “That doesn’t seem like you.”

“Being a woman in the police department isn’t like being a woman in a private company. Or anywhere else, really,” she added. “I wanted to keep my job, and it’s not like he ever actually touched me.”

That wasn’t strictly true. He’d done that phenomenally creepy shoulder-rub thing a few times, but Oliver didn’t need to know that. He had actually killed people, and whenever the subject drifted back to Captain Grifton, he got a look she could only describe as “murder face.”

“Anyway, it’s over,” she said. “I closed enough cases to write my own ticket to Major Crimes. I can handle him.”

“Yeah, you can.” Oliver’s voice sounded rough, but also sort of . . . proud. “But I don’t like to see him get away with what he’s done. It was bad enough that standing over dead bodies every day looked like the better option.”

“He’s not getting away with anything,” said Felicity. “I did a little harassing of my own. Electronically. Just to drive home the point.”

He gave her a quick smile, then looked down, and it was then that she noticed how tired he looked. Tired and burdened, more so than usual. He was pale, and there were shadows under his eyes.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “Your mom must be frantic about Mr. Steele, and I saw that fire on the news.”

Oliver’s head snapped up. “What fire?”

“The one they’re saying was arson. The one the Hood was spotted at a couple nights ago. You weren’t hurt, were you?”

He was on his feet immediately, ready to face a threat. His eyes were alive and snapping with energy.

“I’m brilliant,” she said. “Of course I’d figure it out.”

All the breath left his body in one big rush, and he sank back against the counter. “Of course.”

“Maybe I’d have known it sooner if I was objective about it, but I’ve met you. I’ve spent time with you--a little bit--and you don’t seem like a scary vigilante. You seem so different.”

She was just barely able to stop herself from finishing the thought: _You seem so different with me._

***

_You seem so different._

Felicity discovering his identity wasn’t much of a surprise, really. She was brilliant. Oliver knew he was lucky she hadn’t guessed sooner.

Dig thought they should prepare for the possibility of Felicity tipping off her fellow cops, but Oliver wasn’t worried about that. He trusted her. He had from Day One, from the moment she tilted her head to let him know she saw through his bullshit story.

_You seem so different._

Oliver had waited a moment before looking at her, bracing himself for disgust, or worse, disappointment. Instead, he saw confusion mixed with curiosity, a pressing need to understand.

She knew.

Felicity knew he was a killer. She’d stood over some of the bodies. She knew, and she hadn’t pushed him out the door. She’d taken his hand, turned it over and traced the lines on his palm. Wholly absorbed, as if she could read in his skin answers to all the questions buzzing in her mind. This hand had crushed the life out of creatures big and small, animal and human. She knew at least some of that, and still she trusted him.

He was beginning to think it was almost worth five years of hell to have Felicity Smoak in his life.

 


	22. Revelations Through the Viewfinder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Felicity becomes internet-famous.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not going to make excuses or apologize for how long it's been because, frankly, I never expected to write fic again. I extricated myself from the fandom when it became too toxic for me, and I turned my focus back to work on my novels. Then at the end of January, I was in a car accident. The injuries to my neck and shoulders kept me from writing, or spending much time at all in front of a computer. When I was released from physical therapy and felt recovered enough to try working on my laptop again, I thought fic might be a good way to dip my toe back into the writing waters after four months. I didn't expect to finish this chapter, and I didn't expect to post it, but finish it I did. Though it felt like it took forever. I'm not promising anything, but I do feel like I'm not quite ready to let this story go yet.

**Chapter 22—Revelations Through the Viewfinder**

 

Oliver made a quick exit after Felicity’s low-key reveal. It wasn’t how she planned to tell him she knew his secret. She hadn’t planned it at all—she was still in her hand-wringing, indecisive stage. It slipped out in the midst of her concern for him, and she couldn’t take it back. Not that she really wanted to. It was kind of a relief.

After Oliver left, Felicity went to bed. She spent an hour tossing and turning, then got up and poured herself another glass of wine to finish off the bottle. She was still a little unsteady from her encounter with her former captain, and she couldn’t help obsessing over how her friendship with Oliver would change now that his secret was out in the open between them. It _was_ a friendship, though it was based on his terrible lies.

_How_ would it change? Would he still want her help? Oliver had known from day one that she was a cop, but would he still trust her? Knowing the identity of the much sought-after vigilante and sitting on the information for as long as she had was a massive conflict of interest. Even worse, she was lying to her partner 24/7. Did Oliver understand that she was putting her career on the line whenever she helped him?

And then she felt petty for worrying about her job when Oliver risked his life every time he pulled down that green hood to hide his face.

At some point, Felicity switched from wine to coffee, and the sun was up before she knew it. When she arrived at work, Lance was antsy, pacing in front of her desk like he’d been there for a while, waiting for her.

“If something’s up, why didn’t you call me?” Felicity asked as she handed him a coffee from her favorite place near her apartment.

“I need a favor,” he said, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “It’s case-related, but I didn’t think we should talk about it over the phone.”

“Okay, I’m intrigued.” She set down her coffee and locked her purse in her desk.

“I need you to bug this.” He slid a phone toward her.

“I won’t ask about a warrant,” said Felicity, eyeing the phone but not touching it. “If you had one, you would have gone to someone in Tech.”

“Come on, you’re smarter than all those sweaty desk jockeys. You can work up something untraceable, right?”

Flattery? From Quentin Lance? Felicity gave him the side eye.

“My daughter’s the one who turned the Hood onto the arson case that’s been on the news the last few days,” said Lance. His voice dropped, jaw clenched. “They’ve been communicating. With this.”

Felicity had reached for the phone, but now she snatched her hand back. Could Oliver really be that stupid? Could Lance?

“You want to bug your own daughter?” she asked him.

“This is our best lead on the Hood.”

“Didn’t he just save a bunch of people from that club fire last night? Including your daughter?” Felicity picked up the phone to inspect it and avoid eye contact.

“I raised both my girls to work _within_ the law, not around it or outside it,” Lance said. “Laurel knows better.”

So did he, but Felicity didn’t point that out. She was the last person to judge him for going a little rogue.

“I’ll do it at lunch, away from here,” she said. Somehow she’d have to warn Oliver. But that would mean talking to him, and she wasn’t ready for that yet.

The phone went into the locked drawer with her purse, and they began their shift as usual. It was a slower-paced day, filled with paperwork and witness interviews to wrap up the hostage case. At the end of the day, Lance not-so-casually approached her as she stood in the breakroom fixing a cup of coffee to keep herself awake on the drive home.

“Smoak, are we good?”

“Good? We’re great. We’re _awesome_ ,” she said distractedly, trying to remember how many sugar packets she’d just used.

“The phone is awesome?”

“Oh, the phone!” Lance winced, so she lowered her voice. “We’re good. I got a strong signal from the transmitter I hid in the speaker, and it can’t be back-traced, unless the person doing the back-tracing is me. But there’s only one Felicity Smoak!”

“Thank God for that,” Lance muttered, but he was sort of smiling. Felicity’s mouth was used to taking that as a sign of encouragement, so she began rattling off the specs of the transmitter and why it was better than anything from the tech department. Until Lance stopped her with an upraised hand.

“Talk to me like I’m a third grader, please,” he said.

“Next time Laurel calls the Hood, we’ll able to listen to every word.”

Lance nodded and turned away.

“Detective,” Felicity called after him. He turned back. “I know you swore to bring this guy down, but using your own daughter as bait, that’s stone-cold.”

Lance shot her a look and then walked off.

Felicity stared into her TARDIS mug. “I really just said that, didn’t I?”

She couldn’t have helped herself, even if she had more control over the words that came out of her mouth. It was the kind of thing _her_ father might have done, and Detective Lance was supposed to be better than that.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Felicity went ahead and took the call since she was already clocked out for the day. “Hi, Mom.”

Felicity held the phone away from her ear, braced for the inevitable squeal. Donna Smoak behaved on every phone call as if she was catching up with her best friend after years spent apart. Eventually she settled down and began to speak like an adult. It didn’t take her long to reveal the true reason for her call.

“So tell me exactly how long you’ve been seeing Oliver Queen.”

“Wh—what?” Felicity sputtered. “No, no, no, that’s not—”

“Tell me everything,” said Mom. “It’s the least you can do after holding out on me. I had to find out from a magazine in the grocery checkout lane.”

“A magazine? Wrote something about me and—” It occurred to her that the SCPD breakroom was not the best place to be using her Loud Voice. She brought it down a few notches. “About me and Oliver? And you saw it in Vegas?”

“There’s no article, just a caption on some grainy pictures. You haven’t made the cover yet.”

“‘Yet’?”

“Oh, sweetie, it’s only a matter of time,” Mom replied. “I think the pictures were taken through a window across the street, but I’m telling you, you two look very cozy.”

Felicity startled when the door to the breakroom swung open and three dispatchers entered, talking and laughing. The swing shift was coming on, so there would be a steady stream of people in and out soon.

“Mom, I can’t talk here,” Felicity said. “Let me call you back when I get to my car.”

She had parked in the employee parking lot, only about a fifteen-second walk from the door, but she wanted to get off the phone long enough to check her tablet. Her personal e-mail was flooded with Google alert notifications.

“No, no, no, no,” Felicity moaned.

It was _Scoop_ , one of those cheesy tabloids that published pictures of actresses without makeup or flaunting their cellulite on not-so-private beaches. Hardly a bastion of journalistic integrity or hard-hitting news, but it had hundreds of thousands of readers. She brought up the pictures.

“Oh my God.”

There were three photos. From the clothes, Felicity could tell the shots were taken the day Oliver first asked for her help. In the largest one, he was the main focus, because she sat with her back to the window. The enterprising photographer had caught him in the act of pulling out the other chair at her table. And the way he was looking down at her . . .

_Utterly charmed_ was the phrase her mother used on the phone moments later.

“You two are adorable,” Mom said after emitting another squeal. “Now spill. I want all the gory details.”

“Gross, Mom. There’s nothing to tell. There is nothing between me and Oliver Queen.”

“Please. There’s something. That photo just screams something. So how did you meet him?”

“Just like that,” Felicity said. “This picture was taken when we met. I recognize my clothes.”

“We’ll talk about what you were wearing later, believe me.”

“Oh, I know we will,” Felicity muttered.

“How on earth did you land the universe’s most eligible bachelor?” Mom asked. “You _are_ a Smoak, and Smoak women always get their man, but Oliver Queen? I wouldn’t believe it if I didn’t have proof right in front of me.”

“Proof of what? It’s a blurry photo of a technologically hopeless billionaire asking me for computer help.”

“That’s not all it is,” Mom insisted. “He’s looking at you like you hung the moon. Utterly charmed.”

She pressed for more details, but Felicity had few to give. Most of her interactions with Oliver were related to his nightly hooded activities. But Mom was so insistent that Felicity finally broke down and told her about the Queen family Christmas party. It only elicited more shrieking, and reinforced her mom’s belief that there was something more than platonic going on, but it eventually allowed Felicity to wind down the conversation with a minimal amount of guilt.

* * *

 

After the unsatisfying and unsettling conversation with his mom, Oliver returned to his room. His faith in _her_ had been more shaken than his faith in his father. Nothing else he could learn about Robert Queen would shock him, but it didn’t have to be that way for Thea. It shouldn’t be. He would keep his mother’s secret for now, but he had his doubts about her recent interactions with Malcolm Merlyn. Thea was still a kid, but she’d always been observant. If she saw something that bothered her, more than likely there was something to it.

Oliver sat down again in front of his computer and woke up the screen, but he wasn’t even sure what he was looking at. He knew his way around the internet, but ARGUS hadn’t tapped him for his tech skills.

He sighed, shutting his laptop. He needed Felicity.

It had been almost a week since she had blurted out his secret in the middle of her kitchen over a bottle of wine. The first time someone had found out, he’d killed them. When Diggle found out, it was because Oliver had no alternative. With Felicity, it had been a long week waiting for the hammer to drop. On day one, his heart leapt into his throat every time a door opened or his phone buzzed. But there had been no midnight knocking, no handcuffs, and not a word from Felicity.

But Oliver would need her help to crack this. He didn’t know anyone else with her skills. He trusted her.

And he missed her.


End file.
